Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals 9781472552075, 9780715629017

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In memoriam H.J. Blumenthal 30.3.1936 – 23.4.1998

Introduction 1. On Abstinence from Killing Animals On Abstinence from Killing Animals, written in the last third of the third century CE, is a treatise in the form of an open letter from Porphyry of Tyre to his friend Firmus Castricius. Both were philosophers, but Castricius had ‘reverted to consuming flesh’ (1.1.1): that is, he had abandoned the vegetarian diet which he and Porphyry had both thought essential for a committed philosopher. To reconvert him, Porphyry offers an impressive repertory of debate and observation about animals, humans and gods. Biology and theology, ethology and anthropology, are called in to support philosophy; food for the body and food for the soul are equal concerns. Are animals non-rational beings, and thereby excluded from any human community, to be used as humans see fit – exploited as workers, killed for food or medicine or pleasure, or sacrificed to the gods? Do true gods demand the sacrifice of living creatures, or is what passes for religion only a cover for human greed and demonic manipulation? Why do humans acquiesce in the somnolent, desire-driven life of the body, ignoring the evidence that they are immortal souls, and what should they do to break free? Porphyry and Castricius probably met in Rome, when Porphyry joined (in 263 CE) the group which studied with the philosopher Plotinus. Forty years later, Porphyry described the group in the Life of Plotinus which he prefixed to the Enneads, his edition of the philosophical writings of Plotinus.1 This preface gives the most vivid picture we have of a lateantique philosopher among his students. The members of the group varied greatly in their choice of lifestyle. Plotinus, who came from somewhere in Egypt, would not talk about his home or family, had no property (he lodged in the house of a Roman lady, Gemina), was celibate and vegetarian, and ate, drank and slept little. Yet he accepted the social responsibilities of friendship. He acted as arbitrator in legal disputes, and took seriously his financial and educational duties as guardian for children whose father had died.2 Some of his students had heavier domestic, political and business commitments. There were Roman senators, doctors (from Palestine, Arabia and Alexandria), and even a professional public speaker who was also a moneylender. Castricius had estates in Campania, the best farming land in Italy, and probably decided on a political career. The senator Rogatianus, in contrast, abandoned a political career for the study of philosophy. He refused to act as praetor (a very senior post with special responsibility for law) even when his official escort came to summon him, and he stayed with friends instead of being accessible in his own great

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Introduction house. Rogatianus, Porphyry, Castricius, and probably others, were vegetarian.3 As Porphyry said (Abst. 1.48.1), most philosophers approved of a frugal diet, but vegetarianism meant more than that. The title of this translation, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, tries to convey some of Porphyry’s purpose. His book is conventionally known as On Abstinence, or by the Latin title de Abstinentia, but its full title is On Abstinence from Animates: in Greek, peri apokhês empsukhôn. This is difficult to translate into Latin, or into English.4 apokhê is ‘holding back’, empsukha are not just living creatures (zôia) but creatures with souls. According to Porphyry, animals (unlike plants) have rational souls, less rational than human souls but still recognisably kin to humans. Animals can be seen to recognise and assess their situation, plan for the future, respond to each other and to humans, communicate with each other and (so far as human understanding allows) with humans. It is therefore wrong to kill animals for any reason other than immediate self-defence. It is especially wrong if the purpose is only to provide people with meat, a kind of food which for most people is both unnecessary and unhealthy. Porphyry of course approves of frugality and of kindness to animals, but these are not his only reasons for abstinence from killing and eating animals. Most philosophers agreed that commitment to philosophy requires a disciplined and moderate lifestyle. Porphyry and Castricius were Platonist philosophers, and for Platonists it was especially important to minimise the distraction caused to the soul by the desires of the body. They believed that the true self is the intellectual soul, which has temporarily fallen away from contemplating God because it is involved with the mortal body. Platonists (like Plato himself) had different ideas about the cause of this involvement: it might be inherent weakness, or excessive self-confidence, or natural affinity of souls for bodies, or a god-given mission to illuminate the material world.5 Whatever the cause, the soul now inhabits a world which is mortal, corporeal and changeable, at the furthest remove from God, and the mortal body demands the soul’s attention. But the soul is able to turn back towards God, and philosophers must work to purify body and soul from the contaminating effects of existence in the material world. The philosopher aims to ‘become like God’ (Plato, Theaetetus 176b), that is, ‘to be just and holy with wisdom’ so that the true self may rise towards God even in this life and be ready for return to God after death. Porphyry argues that the philosopher should concentrate on feeding the intellect with contemplation and thoughts about God. The body also must be fed, but not on meat. Meat requires expensive and distracting preparation (1.46.2); it obstructs the soul by weighing down the body and stimulating desire (1.47.2); and it cannot be acquired without doing harm. Killing animals harms them because it takes away their souls (2.13.1), whereas God, who is wholly good, does no harm to anything (3.26.11). That

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Introduction is a challenge to traditional Graeco-Roman belief about the relationship of humans, animals and gods. Meat-eating was closely linked to the Graeco-Roman mode of animal sacrifice, in which the inedible parts of the victim were burned for the gods, and the edible parts were eaten by the worshippers or sold off by the priests for others to eat. The everyday Mediterranean diet was based on grain made into bread or porridge and enlivened with whatever was available as a ‘relish’ (opson): oil, olives, herbs and vegetables, cheese, sometimes fish. For most people, only special occasions made it worth killing an animal for food. Such occasions – religious festivals and major life-events – also required the animal to be offered to the gods, in honour or thanksgiving or hope of benefit (2.24.1). This is not to say that meat was unobtainable without sacrifice. In town markets it was always available, and had not always been ritually butchered and offered.6 But Porphyry still had to counter the religious argument that by authorising sacrifice, the gods have authorised meat-eating by humans. The standard definition of ‘human’ (used by Porphyry in his Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories) was ‘mortal rational animal’. We are below the gods because we are mortal like the other animals, but above the other animals because we are rational like the gods. This status is acknowledged when we offer sacrificial animals to gods, who need no food, and eat the meat ourselves. But according to Porphyry, gods, humans and animals are all rational. Animals are less rational than humans, but are still too close kin for us to kill them unless it is in immediate self-defence, as we would kill a dangerous human (2.22.2). Humans are less rational than gods, but are still capable of assimilation to the divine when freed from the body (perhaps even in brief experiences of union in this life), and should try to be as much like the gods as human life allows. We should therefore understand that gods do no harm and have no needs, least of all for dead flesh. They welcome simple bloodless offerings, such as grain or barleycakes or flowers, which manifest the respect of ordinary unphilosophic people. From the philosophic few, the proper offering is contemplation and pure thought uncontaminated by the concerns of the body (2.34.2-3). When Porphyry heard that Castricius had lapsed from the beliefs they had shared, he knew it could not be from simple greed or from mistaken ideas about health, and he was anxious about the possible motives for this change (1.1.1-2.2). Why should he be anxious? As On Abstinence progresses, some reasons become clear. Castricius might have been convinced by philosophic arguments that it is impossible, or simply mistaken, to treat animals as if they were humans, that is, to regard them as part of our society and kill them only in self-defence (1.4.1-4). But he might instead have been persuaded by Gnostics among the students of Plotinus that his enlighted soul was not affected by the experiences of his body (1 chs 41-2). Their position could seem to be supported by Plotinus’ belief (which was, as he knew, untraditional in Platonism) that there is a part

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Introduction of the soul which never fully descends from the divine to the material world.7 Or Castricius might have been convinced by other philosophers, or even by social and political pressure, that the gods do require traditional sacrifice and that refusing it would mean harm to the individual and the community (2 chs 41-3). Porphyry tells us that he was the devoted assistant of Amelius, who worked with Plotinus for twenty years, and that Amelius was a lover of sacrifices.8 If Castricius accepted any of these persuasions, he would be free to participate fully in Roman social and political life. But from Porphyry’s perspective, he would be putting his true self at risk by his failure to understand the natures of body, soul and God. Except when it is wholly engaged in contemplation, the soul must supervise and regulate the body’s concerns, so body and soul must both be purified; and to suppose that divine power can do harm is, for Porphyry as for Plato, as much a contradiction as supposing that heat can cool (2.41.2). Porphyry was unimpressed by reports of the arguments Castricius had offered (he did not repeat them, but said later (1.26.4), that they were covered by his preliminary survey). There was, he said, a much stronger tradition of anti-vegetarian writing than Castricius had realised. In the interests of friendship and of rational persuasion, he would collect these arguments, then refute them (1.3.2-3). The result is On Abstinence. 2. Castricius and Porphyry Castricius is known to us only from what Porphyry says in On Abstinence and in the Life of Plotinus: ‘the greatest lover of beauty of our time, who revered Plotinus, assisted Amelius [the long-term colleague of Plotinus] in everything like a good house-slave, and behaved to me, Porphyry, in all respects like a true-born brother.’9 Castricius’ estates at Minturnae in Campania helped to provide for Plotinus, who had no property of his own. Porphyry’s biography also depends almost entirely on what he chooses to tell us in the Life, but scholarly imagination, ancient and modern, has been tempted to supplement it. The key date is his arrival in Rome, aged 30, in the tenth year of Gallienus, i.e. 263 CE.10 He came from Tyre in Phoenicia, and was named Malkos, ‘king’, after his father. Ancient Phoenician wisdom (or what was thought to be ancient wisdom) was respected in the early centuries CE, and Porphyry mentions the Phoenicians several times in On Abstinence, but he never claims to be one. His chosen identity, and his perspective on the world, is Greek. He never admits knowledge of any other language, not even Latin, and he tells his readers his original name only in order to demonstrate that references to ‘Basileus’ mean him, Porphyry. ‘Basileus’ (Basil) is the Greek equivalent of Malkos, ‘king’. ‘Porphyry’ is an ingenious and enduring nickname: porphurios, purple, was worn by kings and came especially from Tyre.11 Before he came to Rome, Porphyry had worked at Athens with the great

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Introduction scholar Longinus, and they kept in touch. Plotinus and Longinus knew each other’s work, though each had doubts about the other. Plotinus said that Longinus was a scholar not a philosopher, philologos not philosophos, and Longinus claimed that he must have been given defective and therefore unintelligible copies of Plotinus’ writings.12 After five years in Rome, Porphyry went to Lilybaeum in Sicily in 268 (Life 6.1-3), and was still away when Plotinus died in 270 (Life 6.15). The Life of Plotinus does not tell us anything after that, except, of course, that Porphyry edited the writings of Plotinus and grouped them into the Enneads, to which the Life is a preface. That leaves a gap of thirty years. Porphyry cites a letter in which Longinus urged him to return from Sicily to Phoenicia, where Longinus then was, but says that he could not accept the invitation. Amelius did visit Longinus, and was at Apamea in Syria when Plotinus died.13 We do not know when Porphyry returned to Italy, but he stayed on in Sicily long enough for hostile Christians to call him ‘Porphyry the Sicilian’ (with the implication that native Sicilians are not educated Greeks).14 The Life does not suggest that the group which had worked with Plotinus continued to meet in Rome, with or without Porphyry’s guidance. He married, relatively late in life, Marcella, widow of another student of Plotinus, and thereby took responsibility for seven stepchildren; he may have remained celibate in marriage, and is not known to have had children of his own.15 According to the Souda (a tenth-century encyclopedia) he was still alive in the reign of Diocletian, who abdicated in 305.16 Eunapius, who wrote biographies of philosophers at the end of the fourth century, said (456-7) that Porphyry taught in Rome and was said to have died there, but gave no information about his students. This in itself suggests that Porphyry did not move back to the Eastern Mediterranean, because Eunapius was much better informed about philosophical networks there.17 He clearly did not know how Porphyry’s reputation in the west was maintained by translation into Latin. In City of God Augustine assumes that both Christian and non-Christian readers will acknowledge Porphyry’s status as the best-known recent philosopher.18 Pierre Courcelle concluded that, although On Abstinence probably survived only in the Greek east, Porphyry’s works on the soul and on Aristotelian logic made him the most important representative of Greek philosophy in the west: ‘the master of western thought’.19 3. Date and context Dating any work of Porphyry is a problem. Only the Life of Plotinus is securely dated, by an internal reference, to 301 or later (Life 23.13).20 Nor is it possible to deduce Porphyry’s philosophical development from his works and to locate On Abstinence within the range.21 We have the titles of approximately seventy works, but only a few have survived. Debates continue on authenticity, on how many are separate works or alternative

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Introduction titles, and on identifying fragments in later authors who, like Porphyry himself, took over arguments from their predecessors.22 Sometimes he cited verbatim, sometimes (see below, section 6) he modified or selected from his texts, thereby changing the effect without warning his readers.23 Other authors used the same tactics on him, and Christian writers particularly liked to use this notoriously anti-Christian philosopher as a resource for attacking Graeco-Roman philosophy and religion. So, for instance, when Joseph Bidez began the immense task of collecting fragments (completed eighty years later by Andrew Smith), almost all his fragments of Cult-Statues were citations from Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, and all those of The Return of the Soul were citations from Augustine, City of God. Similarly, the fragments of the Philosophic History, with the exception of the almost-complete life of Pythagoras, are passages chosen by Christian authors, some to discredit Socrates and some to show how close Plato was to Christianity.24 Fellow-Platonists also selected what they wanted to discuss. Thus the lost Letter to Anebo, on religion and theurgy, survives mostly in the reply by Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, and it would not be safe to suppose that he gave full weight to Porphyry’s questions.25 The net result is that perhaps eleven of Porphyry’s works survive in full, or almost complete. On Abstinence is the longest of these, but the end of its final book is missing,26 and much of it is (as Porphyry said it would be) report and discussion of other people’s arguments, deployed to win an argument rather than to explore all the implications. A comment by Bidez is widely cited: ‘in all that remains of his writings, there is not a thought or an image of which we can say with certainty that it is his own.’27 Strictly speaking, that is correct, but there are phrases, concerns and philosophical structures which can be ascribed to Porphyry if not with certainty, at least with reasonable confidence.28 But it is still not possible to reconstruct Porphyry’s philosophical, and especially his religious, development. Commentators have often accepted that Porphyry followed the simple trajectory suggested by Bidez: from oriental superstition to a critical attitude inspired by Longinus to a more spiritual religion inspired by Plotinus. These categories are questionable in themselves,29 and besides, philosophers may be expected to modify their beliefs, at any stage of their lives, in response to argument and further thought. Porphyry himself described how when he first studied with Plotinus, he wrote a paper arguing (as Longinus had taught him) that the intelligibles exist outside the intellect, then reversed his opinion after two exchanges of papers with Amelius and a third attempt to understand what Plotinus meant.30 He had a reputation for changing his mind or seeing both sides of the question, and of course he cited opinions with which he did not necessarily agree. His various opponents made the most of this. Eusebius gleefully juxtaposed his discussion (in the fragmentary Philosophy from Oracles) of an oracle on the right way to sacrifice animals with his declaration in On

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Introduction Abstinence (2 chs 37-43) that it is bad daimones, not gods, who want animal sacrifice. Augustine exploited the evidence for changes of position on theurgy and on reincarnation, and Iamblichus claimed that Porphyry was in doubt (as well he might be) on the relationship of universal soul to individual soul.31 All that can be said with certainty is that On Abstinence shows the influence of Plotinus, and is therefore later than 263. The favoured (but still unprovable) dating is soon after Plotinus’ terminal illness and death in 268-70, while Porphyry was still in Sicily.32 This would explain why he had news of Castricius from visitors (1.1.1-2), if that is not a literary device. The appealing story of the partridge whom ‘I myself reared at Carthage’ (3.4.7) also fits this context, because Carthage, mother-city of Lilybaeum and daughter-city of Tyre, is only a short sea-crossing away. (It seems almost unkind to point out that Porphyry sometimes takes over first-person narrative from the source he is transcribing.33) More generally, On Abstinence offers an extreme and isolationist version of philosophical asceticism, in which suicide recurs as a theme (see below); and Porphyry was in Sicily because he had thought he was making a rational choice to liberate his soul from the constraints of the body, but Plotinus had diagnosed a melancholic illness and recommended a change of scene (Life 11.11-16). Why, then, does Porphyry never mention Plotinus, not even as a reproach or an example to the devoted Castricius? It could be argued that Plotinus did not provide adequate support for Porphyry’s case: that he taught and practised a less rigorous detachment from the world than Porphyry wanted (see below), and that the Enneads show him thinking about animal souls and animal reason in relation to human souls, but not about animal lives or human treatment of animals. In discussing providence, for instance, he observes that humans fight each other and the ‘other animals’ eat each other, and speculates ‘it is necessary that animals should eat each other; these eatings are transformations into each other of animals which could not stay as they are for ever, even if no one killed them’.34 There is no comment on humans eating animals. Plotinus accepted that if a rational soul became too much involved with the desires of a human body, the soul might after the body’s death transmigrate to an animal body which would be a more appropriate home; but Porphyry (see below) did not want to use transmigration as an argument for abstinence from animals.35 Nevertheless, he could have used Plotinus as an example of philosophic conduct, for Plotinus did not himself eat animals or use medicines with animal content (Life 2.3-5). It is possible that Plotinus was among the ‘individual testimonies’ to abstinence in the lost ending of book 4; but there is no evidence for this, and no mention of Plotinus where we might expect it, in the opening address to Castricius and in the perorations on the true philosopher. The explanations that come to mind are, like so much else, unprovable.

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Introduction Perhaps Porphyry did not, at the time of writing On Abstinence, think it right to make public the teachings of Plotinus; he may have preferred to use Plato’s Phaedo, a key text for On Abstinence (see below, section 5) as an indirect tribute to another philosopher who, like Socrates, has now escaped the constraints of the body. Certainly the writings of Plotinus needed editorial work. Moreover, his reputation may have been too much in dispute (Life 18.1-6) to be helpful. Even his own students could have been unsure. The Life, after all, gives the perspective of thirty years later, and even then remembers instances of dissatisfaction and of puzzlement. Whatever the reason, Plotinus is not named in On Abstinence. When Porphyry discusses the soul in relation to God, he has many phrases and images in common with Plotinus, and these may well have been immediately recognisable to anyone who had worked with Plotinus. But the named philosophical heroes of On Abstinence are Plato, Pythagoras and Empedocles. 4. Arguments for abstinence Porphyry says in his opening paragraphs that Castricius was a committed follower of Pythagoras and Empedocles. To a Greek or Roman reader, these linked names immediately suggested what is now called vegetarianism.36 Porphyry calls it abstinence from animate (empsukhos) food. According to Aristotle, all living things are animate, but plants have only ‘nutritive’ soul: that is, they are alive and grow. The Stoics declined even to call this animating principle soul, psukhê, and said that plants cohere by phusis, nature. Porphyry agrees with Aristotle, but still calls plant foods apsukha, inanimate: abstinence from animate food therefore means abstinence from eating animals.37 Present-day vegetarians are often challenged with the argument that eating plants also takes life, and a committed follower of Pythagoras and Empedocles might indeed feel qualms about eating plant foods, because both claimed to remember that their souls had once been joined to plants.38 (Manicheans, according to Augustine, were taught that it is murder to kill or harvest plants; so disciples incurred the guilt and the Elect ate the food and prayed for the disciples.39) But mortals must eat to stay alive. Porphyry argues that harvesting does not kill plants (2.13.1), which let their fruits and seeds fall whether or not humans collect the crops. (He does not discuss the further problem of vegetables.) Animals are different. Even the Stoics agreed that animals have soul in that they are self-moving: that is, their movements are prompted by their perceptions and impulses, whereas plant movement is merely response to stimulus. Animals also differ from plants in that they cannot be used as food unless they are killed, because people will not eat animals that have died naturally of age or illness (3.18.2). Are humans so different from animals that they may rightly kill the ‘other animals’ for food?40

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Introduction Those who answered ‘yes’ could argue that the other animals are fundamentally unlike humans because their souls lack reason. This is the first anti-vegetarian argument that Porphyry reports (1.4.1-2), and it has had the greatest influence in western tradition. Seventeen centuries later, we can scan brain activity in animals, but we are still debating whether animals have consciousness and are able to communicate. To say that animals lack reason, logos, is to say that they cannot talk to us and therefore cannot make social contracts with us, and moreover that their awareness of their own experience and of other inhabitants of the world is different from ours. They react, whereas we can assess and choose to do right. As Plotinus once (probably) said, animals are angry because of their temperaments, not because they think that an injury has been done to them.41 Animals do not belong to the human community, and there is no possibility of treating them with justice, so we should use them according to our needs and interests. Humans, like gods, belong to the community of rational beings, but animals cannot reason to first principles or reflect on who and what they are.42 Greek religious tradition held that the gods themselves had instituted the form of animal sacrifice in which the worshippers offer an animal to the gods and share the meat. Biology and theology alike supported meat-eating. Those who answered ‘no’ could argue that animals are fundamentally like human beings. Their bodies have the same basic components, and their physical and emotional responses are recognisably like ours. They can communicate with each other and to some extent with us (3 chs 3-6). We can see that they assess their situation and make provision for the future, show practical wisdom and learn from experience, and some can be trained in complex skills or corrected by punishment (3 chs 7-15). None of this would be possible without logos. Animals are not as rational as humans are, but that does not mean they lack reason entirely (3.8.7-8). Porphyry does not suggest that they can reason to first principles, but he does argue that their close connection with the gods is acknowledged in myths, cult-titles and cult-images (3.16.1-17.2, 4 ch. 9). Pythagoras and Empedocles made the strongest possible claim: that the soul currently joined with the body of a non-human animal may have been reincarnated from, or may yet be reincarnated in, a human being. Consequently, to use such a creature for food is murder. Anyone who eats an animal is contaminated in body and soul. Nor could an animal possibly be an appropriate sacrifice to the gods, and anyone who thinks it is must have a wholly unworthy concept of god. Porphyry wholeheartedly agrees with these conclusions, but the transmigration of souls is not part of his case, and according to Augustine he did not accept it. Transmigration recurs at several points in the text, but Porphyry says at the outset (1.3.4) that he will not discuss arguments directed specifically against Empedocles, and he is also unwilling to reveal esoteric (presumably Pythagorean) doctrine.43 Like Seneca’s teacher Sotion, himself the student of a Pythago-

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Introduction rean, Porphyry thinks that the case for vegetarianism is strong enough even without a belief in transmigration.44 From a present-day perspective, On Abstinence misses many opportunities because Porphyry does not provide this kind of survey of arguments and positions. The anti-vegetarian arguments he reports are all countered somewhere in the four books, but Porphyry’s working methods impede any full and consistent discussion. He makes extensive use (see section 6 below) of excerpts from other writers, and though he sometimes restates and paraphrases what they say, he does not cross-refer or make comparisons.45 Thus, for instance, his preliminary survey of anti-vegetarian arguments in book 1 includes a brief statement of the Stoic claim that justice extends only to rational beings and a much longer Epicurean account of justice as a social contract. He does not ask how these positions differ. His challenge to the Stoic claim is postponed to book 3 (which is heavily dependent on Plutarch: see below, section 6). In the course of book 3 Porphyry offers another counter to Epicurean argument: there could be a non-verbal contract between humans and domestic animals (3.13.1-2). In his peroration (3.26.9-10) he shifts to a quite different, Platonic account of justice as harmlessness (i.e. doing no injury) achieved because each part of the soul does its proper job. These connections and contrasts are not made explicit.46 Similarly, Porphyry collects arguments to show that animals have both reason and passions, but he does not discuss in detail the Stoic claim that animals cannot have either because their phantasiai, ‘impressions’, are different from those of humans. According to the Stoics, human impressions are thoughts: they have a propositional content to which we can give or refuse assent. Animal impressions do not have a propositional content, and the animal can neither assent to them nor refuse assent.47 It is not easy to summarise Porphyry’s sequence of arguments (especially in book 3), but at least it is possible to show the range. The first half of Book 1 provides a survey of anti-vegetarian arguments from the major philosophical schools and the ‘plain man’. First, Peripatetic and Stoic arguments are briefly indicated (chs 4-6; 1.4.4-6.1 is a citation from Plutarch). Civilisation and justice would collapse if we attempted to treat animals as our kin, for only rational beings can act justly and be treated with justice, and humans are kin to gods but not to animals; civilised human life requires the use of animals. Moreover, if plants also have souls, cutting down a tree would be as bad as slaughtering an animal. Porphyry does not discuss these arguments here (he waits until book 3), but moves on to Epicurean arguments about justice (chs 7-12, from Hermarchus, successor of Epicurus). The Epicureans say that the laws which forbid us to kill humans, but allow us to kill other animals, rest on consensus not on enforcement. This is because the laws are in the interest of humans. Animals endanger us either directly, because they are predators or poisonous, or indirectly because if they are not kept down they will

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Introduction multiply and eat all the food. They cannot make agreements with us or be frightened by the threat of punishment. Justice is an agreement for mutual advantage, and justice between humans and animals is simply not possible. Human advantage requires the death of animals. Chs 13-26 add (from Heracleides Ponticus and/or Clodius the Neapolitan) a miscellany of (still familiar) arguments by the ‘plain man’. Humans have eaten meat ever since they had fire to cook it. We are at war (admittedly not total war) with the beasts, and kill them in self-defence. Eating meat does not damage the body or the soul: no philosopher, including Socrates, has followed the example of Pythagoras. We must cull animals for their sake as well as ours. We need medicines derived from animals. If it is unjust to deprive animals of soul, is it just to eat plants, or to take milk or honey or wool? If animal souls will be reincarnated in humans, surely we do them a favour by releasing them from the animal body? The gods have made it clear that they approve the use of animals for food and that they want animal sacrifice. The second half of book 1 (chs 27-57) is concerned especially with temperance, sôphrosunê, which allows the true philosopher to approach God in purity of soul and body. Porphyry addresses only those who have recognised that their true self is the intellectual soul, and who have chosen the life of philosophy over the drowsy pleasures of the material world (1.27.1-5). It is impossible, he argues, to combine philosophy with participation in civic life, in politics and scandal and dinner parties. The intellectual soul cannot (as the Gnostics claimed) remain unaffected by all these: only in contemplation can the soul escape from supervision of the body’s concerns. The philosopher who seeks to return to God should live so as to minimise involvement with the body and maximise alertness of intellect. Meat may be required by those who lead a physically strenuous life, but all serious philosophers (including Epicureans, chs 48-55) approve of a simple, trouble-free diet. At the end of this book (1.57.4) Porphyry raises a new question. He has talked of abstinence as holiness, hagneia, but in Greek religious tradition, abstinence is a preparation for animal sacrifice, which is also thought to be holy. Book 2, therefore, is concerned with piety, eusebeia, and in particular with sacrifice. Book 2 begins with a brief clarification. It may be necessary to kill some animals in self-defence; it may even be proper for some animals to be sacrificed. It does not follow that other animals may be killed or that sacrificed animals must be eaten. Again, it may be necessary for some people to eat meat: it does not follow that everyone should. Porphyry now (chs 5-32) borrows extensively from Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus to argue that animal sacrifice is a perversion of the true Greek religious tradition. The earliest humans ate, and sacrificed, plant foods, first gathered and then cultivated. Starvation led them to cannibalism, so they sacrificed humans; animal sacrifice was first a substitute for human sacrifice, then a manifestation of greed. The gods prefer simple sacrifices

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Introduction made by worthy people, but (as comparison of different cultures shows) humans sacrifice what they want to eat. The second half of book 2 (chs 33-61), like that of book 1, is concerned with the true philosopher. He is the priest of the true God: what sacrifices should he make? Porphyry’s response draws on a range of esoteric material: the teachings ascribed to Pythagoras, the poems ascribed to Orpheus, the Chaldaean oracles which were believed to convey the ancient wisdom of Babylon, the Hermetic treatises which were said to be revelations by Hermes Trismegistus (the Egyptian god Thoth). Porphyry argues that the god who is above all wants nothing material, and pure unvoiced thoughts are the appropriate sacrifice. This god’s offspring, the intelligible gods who sustain the human intellect, should be offered some of that food for the intellect, in the form of hymns (2.34.2-4). Offerings of crops and other simple inanimate foods are welcomed by the gods who sustain this world, but demands for animal sacrifice come from greedy daimones who pretend to be gods (chs 36-43). Even if animals must be sacrificed to protect against demonic attack, eating them attracts bad daimones and contaminates body and soul (chs 44-54); the history of human sacrifice shows that victims need not be eaten (chs 54-7). Tradition shows some right understanding of the gods, and the philosopher need not try to reform the state, but he must himself stay clear of bad customs whatever the cost (chs 58-61). Book 3 moves on from temperance and piety to two other cardinal virtues, namely justice (dikaiosunê) and wisdom (phronêsis).48 It responds to the Stoic argument, briefly stated in book 1, that justice can extend only to beings like ourselves, that is rational beings, and that animals are not rational. Porphyry borrows selectively from Aristotle, and extensively from Plutarch (acknowledged only for 3.18.3-24.6, see below), to argue that animals are rational, even if less rational than humans: they have phronêsis at least in the sense of practical wisdom, and they have both expressive logos, language, and internal logos, thought. He begins with expressive logos. Animals make complex and diverse expressive sounds. Humans find them hard to understand, but most humans also find other human languages meaningless. Animals can communicate with others of their species, and to some extent with humans, and they can learn from each other and from humans (chs 3-6). Porphyry now moves to internal logos, arguing (chs 7-8) that the bodily differences between humans and animals are a matter of ‘more and less’, like the differences among humans who are weaker or stronger, better or worse, than one another. The soul is affected by the body’s condition, but not to the point of changing its own nature. Animals are less rational than humans, but that does not make them a quite different, non-rational kind of creature, any more than a partridge is a flightless bird because falcons fly so much better. Animals and humans have in common both illnesses (pathê) that affect the body and experiences (also pathê) that affect the soul, especially perception.

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Introduction Now (3.9.1) Porphyry needs to show that animals have a rational soul and wisdom. His arguments are cumulative rather than sequential. Animals are aware (ch. 9) of their strengths and weaknesses and of everything that is to their advantage. This is not merely natural (instinctive) behaviour (ch. 10): animals can learn and remember. They can also behave badly, though they often behave better than humans. They manifest characteristic virtues, including justice (ch. 11). Animal behaviour cannot be dismissed as non-rational just because we do not understand how an animal reasons (3.11.3). Many animals need and are part of human society, and those that attack humans do so only because they need food or territory; people under similar stress would be far more ferocious (ch. 12). It might be argued (ch. 13) that animals are rational, but still have no relationship with humans: but the original argument was that animals have no relationship with humans because they are not rational. The absence of a social contract does not prove that they are not rational, for there are people who have not made a contract. Animals have, by wisdom (sophia) and justice, made their masters into their servants. Their vices (for instance, sexual jealousy) manifest rationality; but there is one vice they lack: unlike humans, they are loyal to benefactors. Their rationality (ch. 14) is shown by their response to traps, and (ch. 15) by their ability to learn human skills. They do not have assemblies, or cities, or lawcodes, but that does not prove lack of reason. Human greed refuses to acknowledge animal reason, but in religious tradition animals are honoured and associated with gods (chs 16-17). Porphyry now moves to a further sequence of argument (3.18.1). If animals are rational, although less rational than humans, humans can treat animals justly; and justice does not extend to plants, so humans need not do harm in order to live. In the context of an argument that animals have logos, whereas plants do not, Porphyry (citing Plutarch) makes a claim which is fundamental for present-day vegetarians: ‘it is the nature of animals to have perceptions, to feel distress, to be afraid, to be hurt, and therefore to be injured’ (3.19.2). We have a closer relationship with the animals that share our lives than we do with anti-social humans. The Stoic Chrysippus was wrong (ch. 20) to argue that animals are for our use: some animals (such as mosquitoes and crocodiles) are useless to us, though we are useful to them. Human treatment of animals, whether unjust or kind, is a training in treatment of humans. Animals cannot lack reason: they could not survive unless they recognised what is appropriate for them or alien to them, and that cannot be done by perception alone (chs 21-2). They care for their offspring, and even Stoics recognise such care as the beginning of concern for others and therefore of justice (3.22.7). Theirs is a weak and cloudy rationality in comparison with humans, but they still have it. Even their failings show that they have reason, just as illness or impairment implies a capacity (chs 23-4). Finally, Porphyry borrows again from

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Introduction Theophrastus, to argue that humans are related in body and soul to the other animals (ch. 25). Book 3 is half the length of the first two books, because its concluding evocation of the true philosopher occupies only two chapters (26-7). Abstinence increases justice: people who do not kill animals will be less likely to kill members of their own species. The philosopher behaves justly because he does no harm. He does not pursue pleasure, but is ruled by reason, and he has spiritual riches which allow him to feed his intellect instead of serving his body. Book 4 promises (ch. 1) refutation of some remaining arguments, particularly the argument from human advantage and the belief that no people and no philosopher has abstained from meat-eating, which are still on the agenda from book 1. Porphyry offers examples of collective abstinence which also show that abstinence is advantageous, and which allow him to counter other arguments. In primitive Greece (ch. 2) abstinence produced health and peace. In the society devised by Lycurgus for Sparta (4.3.1-5.2), abstinence produced freedom from corruption and ostentation. When abstinence is practised by a spiritual elite, they are serene and healthy, and their closeness to the gods benefits the community as a whole. This is exemplified by Egyptian priests, Jewish Essenes, Persian Magi and Indian Brahmans (chs 6-18). Finally, a citation from Euripides on Cretan initiates (ch. 19) returns to Greece and leads into a general discussion (ch. 20) of the underlying principle: purity is isolation, whereas contamination is the mixing of opposites. It is puzzling that book 4 does not include the Pythagoreans among the examples of spiritual elites. Greek culture did not supply Porphyry with examples of ascetic priesthood: it is difficult to find anything more demanding than a few days’ abstinence from sex or from specific foods in preparation for an annual ceremony. Pythagorean initiates undertook not to reveal esoteric teaching, and Porphyry occasionally hints that he is bound by this rule.49 But there was much material about Pythagorean tradition and lifestyle which was in the public domain, and which was perfectly suited to Porphyry’s argument. The true philosopher of On Abstinence lives as befits a priest of the true God (2.49.1); the Pythagoreans, a Greek spiritual elite who draw on the best of Greek and non-Greek tradition, live so that they are always physically and morally pure, ready at any time to offer worship in a form appropriate to their profound understanding of God. They also benefit the cities which they help to govern, and if animal sacrifice is really necessary for the protection of cities, they are allowed to participate, within limits. Porphyry collected these traditions in the life of Pythagoras which formed part of his lost Philosophic History (this, as usual, is undatable both absolutely and in relation to his other works); and Iamblichus developed the material in On the Pythagorean Life, using either Porphyry or the same sources as Porphyry, into an account of the ideal philosophic community. Porphyry

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Introduction appears to have made some use of Pythagoras in the lost final section of book 4 (see below), but more cannot be said. Book 4, like the preceding books, begins with argument and example, then advances to general discussion of the philosophic life. The first section (chs 1-19) is shorter even than book 3, but it is impossible to tell whether the concluding section, like that of book 3, was also very short. After the impressive chapter (20) on purity, Porphyry moves to his remaining questions. Some peoples eat only meat, but that is because they cannot grow crops; some peoples eat their aged parents, but that does not mean Greeks should do the same. The text ends mid-sentence in chapter 22, when Porphyry has just begun on individual testimonies to abstinence, with the laws of Triptolemos and of Drakon. Jerome, who drastically summarised On Abstinence for use against the only moderately ascetic Jovinian, gives reason to suppose that Porphyry went on to Orpheus, Pythagoras and Socrates. Jerome himself proceeds to the Cynic heroes, Antisthenes and Diogenes, but they are much less useful to Porphyry’s case.50 Probably there was a peroration on the true philosopher. 5. Philosophy and asceticism Porphyry’s true philosopher, one of a minority even among philosophers, is engaged in the purification of body and soul in order to rise towards God, ‘alone to the alone’ (2.49.1). Solitude and isolation are constant themes. ‘Purification is separation from all these, purity is singling out’, as Porphyry says in his interpretation of traditional purity rules (4.20.9). Augustine said that Porphyry’s rallying cry was ‘avoid all body’,51 and that seems particularly apt for On Abstinence. Porphyry takes for granted the Platonist account of human life. The human soul is rational, incorporeal and immortal. It is connected with the divine intellect, but the experiences of the corruptible mortal body in the impermanent material world are at the furthest remove from the divine. The soul has fallen away from God because of its attraction to the body. In this life, it can be tied down by bodily desires and demands, or it can be liberated by detachment to ascend in thought towards God as it waits for release from the body. It was Plato who characterised the philosophic life as ‘practising for death’ (Phaedo 67E; cf. 1.51.3), and his Phaedo supplies Porphyry with guidelines and images for what the philosopher should do in the meantime. The body, according to Plato’s Socrates, is extremely distracting. We have to feed it, it gets ill, it fills us with appetites and fears and fantasies, and we have to get possessions (the origin of conflict) to supply its needs. So we must have as little as possible to do with it, and ‘we must purify ourselves from it until God himself releases us’ (Phaedo 67A). Purification, katharsis, is (67C) ‘the separation, so far as possible, of soul from body [] released as if from chains’. ‘So far as possible’ is a constant refrain of On Abstinence. Porphyry is always aware of the limitations imposed by a

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Introduction mortal body, especially if its chains are made heavier by preoccupation with sensation and passion. Plato provides more of Porphyry’s themes: the philosopher who practises for death should achieve calm, follow reason, contemplate the divine and be fed by it; and when he dies he should go to his kin, that is to the divine (Phaedo 84A). Porphyry also directly quotes (1.36.3-4) Plato’s Theaetetus on the philosopher who is uncontaminated by the life of the city because he has no experience of it, who cannot even tell you the way to City Hall, let alone keeping up with the gossip; and it is the Theatetus (176B) which supplies a central theme of On Abstinence, namely ‘becoming like God’: ‘we must try to escape from here to there [i.e. to the gods], as quickly as possible. Escape is assimilation to God [homoiôsis theôi], and assimilation is to be just and holy in wisdom.’ But Porphyry’s version of philosophical asceticism, that is, of being in training (askêsis) of body and soul, is more extreme than Plato’s. On Abstinence seems almost obsessively concerned to protect the body from contamination incurred by taking in food and by social contacts of any kind. Plato’s Socrates is always among friends in Athens. Plotinus lived among friends in Rome, teaching, celebrating Plato’s birthday, arbitrating disputes and listening to his wards practise their lessons. But Porphyry’s spiritual elites seek distance from the city, solitude and silence even within their communities, and finally death. In On Abstinence, physical death is not just a metaphor for the end of disruptive desire: it is a longed-for release. Porphyry made it clear in his Sentences that physical death, which releases the body from the soul, is different from philosophic death, which releases the soul from the body. On Abstinence acknowledges that suicide is a violent act which ties the soul to the body instead of detaching it.52 But in book 4 the examples of abstinent elites culminate in the Samanean who, in good health and without troubles, ‘commits his body to fire so as to separate the soul in its purest state from the body, and dies accompanied by songs of praise’ (4.18.3). Porphyry is here transcribing Josephus, who used the Samaneans in a speech supposedly made by the Jewish leader Eleazar as he heartened his followers at Masada to collective suicide in the face of defeat. How are we to interpret this concern for isolation and death? If On Abstinence does indeed belong to the time of Plotinus’ terminal illness, Porphyry’s own experience is obviously relevant. He accepted, in retrospect, that Plotinus had recognised (in modern terms) a suicidal depression, which he had rationalised as a wish to release his soul from the constraints of his body. The solitude of the true philosopher may be all too close to the experience of leaving Rome, and then having friends and fellow-students scattered by Plotinus’ death. But whereas personal experience may explain why On Abstinence, the fullest surviving text of philosophical asceticism, offers so extreme a version, it does not explain away the philosophical position which Porphyry developed from Plato. It may be helpful here to compare the asceticism of Porphyry’s Chris-

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Introduction tian contemporaries, which was still in an experimental stage. Porphyry’s examples of ascetic individuals and communities show the expectations, and the fantasies, which contributed to its eventual shape.53 This is not to say that Porphyry intended On Abstinence as a challenge to Christian claims of holiness. Christians saw him as the great enemy of their faith, but we cannot assume that opposition to Christianity was a specific and permanent concern for him. His immense output included fifteen books against the Christians, which were notorious for a detailed attack on the Christian scriptures. These books may have been part of a larger work on religion, not a specifically anti-Christian treatise.54 Porphyry was receptive to texts which claimed antiquity and were compatible with Platonism, in particular the Chaldaean Oracles (a compilation of the second century CE). He was hostile to texts, including the Christian scriptures, which claimed antiquity and whose supporters challenged Plato: he also wrote a detailed attack on the supposedly ancient Zoroastrian texts used by the Gnostics among the students of Plotinus.55 On Abstinence does not mention or allude to Christians, unless a handful of shared images can be counted as allusion.56 Its targets are people who speak Greek and share Greek culture but fail to understand the Platonist tradition, who think they can call themselves philosophers when their social life shows a soul in the grip of desire and their religious practice shows an unworthy concept of the gods. Porphyry’s asceticism (and his religious beliefs generally, as Augustine noted) had much in common with Christianity, but there are revealing differences of emphasis.57 Christian ascetic texts often shock present-day readers by their insistence on the dangers of sexual desire. These texts warn against any human contact, even with other ascetics, because desire may instantly result. Many social and psychological explanations have been offered, but there is an obvious practical consideration: the target audiences were often the committed young. The women (or girls) had renounced the role of marriage and childbearing that biology and society had prepared for them, the men (or boys) had renounced the role of householder and citizen. Both were taught to interpret sexual feeling, and its physical manifestations, as a sign of their continuing distance from God. According to their scriptures, the first man and woman turned away from God through their own disobedience, and the immediate result was awareness of each other as sexual beings, dominated by desire, in a world which must be sustained by reproduction. It is not surprising that sex, which pulls would-be ascetics back into the world of families and householding, is the dominant concern in these texts. Food is discussed chiefly in terms of fasting to control desire.58 Porphyry had the specific purpose of reconverting Castricius to the physical and spiritual purity of vegetarianism, so On Abstinence is preoccupied with the kind of food that people eat and the social situations in which they eat it. For Porphyry, it is the need for food, for constant

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Introduction refuelling of a mortal body, which is the sign of separation from God (4.20.13-15). Food is necessary for life, sex only for reproduction. Philosophers, the Stoic Musonius remarked, have to struggle with gluttony twice a day for life; but Porphyry can use sexual relationships as a reductio ad absurdum: ‘if you can be concerned with the immaterial while eating gourmet food and drinking vintage wine, why not when having intercourse with a mistress, doing things it is not decent even to name?’ (1.41.2). Sexual desire features as one among many bad consequences of overeating (1.47.2). Porphyry does not say that celibacy is essential for philosophers; he acknowledges (1.41.4) that concessions must be made to the ‘necessity of generation’, which means not just reproduction, but life in the material world of generation and corruption. But he also argues (4.20.3) that all sexual intercourse contaminates the soul, and thus dismisses the traditional distinction between sex for pleasure and sex for the procreation of lawful heirs. There is no sign of a wife and children to disturb the solitude of the philosopher (and no suggestion that the philosopher might be female). It is the preparation of food which is likely to take up his time and attention, and it is the need to eat, not the need for sex and human contact, which ties him to the material world. Porphyry risks appearing to be merely negative and self-protective. He, and a tiny minority of philosophers (1.27.1), may be saved by opting out of human society, which will continue unchanged. He offers nothing to ordinary people, except the suggestion that they may please the gods by simple offerings: they appear only as a contrast to the true philosopher, and their irrationality, ignorance and material values are described with open contempt (1.52.4, 4.18.4-10).59 But his attack on human exploitation of animals, and on the sacrifice of animals to the gods, goes far beyond a wish to avoid contamination. He calls for an awareness of ourselves in relation to the other rational beings – gods and animals – which is unclouded by human greed and sloth. We need to show justice and fellow-feeling towards the other ensouled creatures with whom we share the world, and to recognise their abilities and experiences. We also need to work on our understanding of our true selves in relation to God, to wake up from the sleepy acquiescence in demonic delusions which traps us in the material world. Porphyry’s ascetic motivation is clearest in the image he borrows from Plotinus (1.30.2): we are in exile from our homeland, and must try to remember its language and customs in preparation for our return. How could anyone who recognises his true identity settle for the inferior, impermanent, destructive pleasures of material existence? Augustine linked Plotinus’ image with Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son who recognises that he has abandoned his inheritance for ‘the husks that the swine did eat’.60 Christian writers elaborated the Platonic theme of sexual love (erôs) redirected from the earthly beloved to the divine. Porphyry (followed by Augustine in the Confessions) elaborated the theme of food. Proper food

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Introduction for the body – simple, inanimate, non-violent food – also allows the soul to be fed, and what we must do is to fatten up the soul on intellect (4.20.11). 6. Borrowing from other writers Porphyry wrote On Abstinence for a purpose which was of profound importance to him. Because of his working methods, the text has often been used not as philosophy, but as a quarry for fragments of other writers. Porphyry was a widely read and industrious scholar, who drew on texts ranging over a millennium, from Homer to his own contemporaries. Unacknowledged, or scarcely acknowledged, borrowing was common practice, though plagiarism was an equally common charge. Amelius wrote a book arguing that Plotinus had not plagiarised Numenius. Porphyry, in his Lecture on Literature, narrated a discussion held in the house of Longinus at Athens, at a dinner to celebrate Plato’s birthday. The speakers accuse many Greek authors, including ‘our hero Plato’, of plagiary, bluntly called ‘theft’. There may have been a defence: the extracts we have were chosen by Eusebius to show that, according to Porphyry, Greeks were thieves.61 Eusebius himself was exceptional. In Preparation for the Gospel, he carefully delimited and documented the citations he used to show that Porphyry and other pagans themselves revealed the faults of pagan religion.62 But Porphyry welded his sources into a persuasive sequence of argument, with only occasional doublets or awkward joins, and with referencing which (though not particularly bad by Graeco-Roman standards) is very frustrating for the present-day hunter of fragments. He names an impressive range of authorities whose works do not now survive complete: Hermarchus the Epicurean, Heracleides Ponticus and Clodius the Neapolitan; Empedocles, Theophrastus, Plutarch, Chrysippus; Dicaearchus and Chaeremon and far more obscure historians (Euboulus and Pallas, Euphantus and Neanthes and Asclepiades), not to mention the quotations, probably derived from an anthology, from lost plays of Sophocles and Euripides, and of Menander and Antiphanes and other, unnamed, writers of New Comedy. But it is not easy to determine the extent of a prose fragment. In book 1, Porphyry waits until ch. 26 to acknowledge his sources so far, and then does it only by naming Hermarchus, Heracleides Ponticus and Clodius the Neapolitan. He leaves out Plutarch, from whom he copied a short but important section (1.4.4-6.1). The extract from ‘the Epicureans’, that is Hermarchus, is marked at the beginning and end of chs 7-12, but Heracleides and Clodius are not marked, and Porphyry may well be using Heracleides via Clodius or yet another intermediary. Even more frustrating is the acknowledgement of material from unidentified ‘ancients’ in books 2 (2.4.4) and 3 (3.1.4, 3.18.1), and from ‘some Platonists’ in 2.36.5. Book 2 names Theophrastus at the beginning of material taken from him

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Introduction (ch. 5), and when Porphyry stops using him (ch. 32) he says so and notes that he has made some additions and omissions, but he does not identify the beginning and end of citations. In book 3, Porphyry names Plutarch at the beginning (3.18.3) and end (3.24.6) of a citation, but not in the final chapter which is heavily indebted to Plutarch; and it would not be at all surprising to find an equal debt, to works of Plutarch now lost, in the rest of the book.63 Theophrastus is named at the beginning of a citation (3.25.1) but not at the end. Book 4 comes closest to adequate referencing, but still not very close. Porphyry acknowledges Dicaearchus (4.2.1) as his source for primitive Greece. Plutarch is named (4.3.8) half way through a citation on Lycurgan Sparta, but is not acknowledged in 4 ch. 20. Chaeremon is named (4.6.1) as the source for Egypt, but it is not clear where the citation ends. 4.11.2 suddenly gives a flurry of book-references to Josephus without saying which one Porphyry is in fact copying. 4.15.2-4 explicitly quotes from Asclepiades of Cyprus, and 4.22.2-4 from Hermippus On Legislators, but both quotations may be derived from another source. More important to the fragment-hunter is Porphyry’s habit of unacknowledged modification. When his text can be compared with the original, as it can be for Josephus (4 chs 11-13) and for some of his transcriptions from Plutarch (1.4.4-6.1, 3.20.7-24.5, 4 chs 3-5), it is evident that he makes short or long omissions, or adds phrases, which sometimes alter the effect of the passage. (He does not do this when directly quoting Plato in 1.36.3-4, except for shortening Plato’s own quotation from Pindar.) He also likes to restate and summarise, or elaborate, the arguments of his source; and his efforts in book 3 to make Aristotle a supporter of animal reason show great skill in selective quotation. Unless the text copied is available for comparison, it would be most unwise ever to suppose that he has reproduced exactly and in full what his source said. It would, of course, be equally unwise to suppose that authors who cite Porphyry have reproduced exactly and in full what he said (especially Augustine, who used or provided a Latin translation). 7. Style and translation The style of On Abstinence is inconsistent, because of the long extracts from other authors. The ‘long genealogy’ of Hermarchus (1 chs 7-12) is particularly cumbersome, and there is a noticeable increase in liveliness when Porphyry moves to Heracleides and/or Clodius in ch. 13. The sections which are most likely to be Porphyry’s own composition are the introductory paragraphs of the four books (1 chs 1-3, 2 chs 1-4, 3 ch. 1, 4 ch. 1), and the long accounts of the ‘true philosopher’ in books 1 and 2 (1 chs 27-57, 2 chs 33-61) which interconnect with problems he discussed in other works. He had a favourite tactic, also used in the Life of Plotinus, of quotation (or

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Introduction near-quotation) followed by a paraphrase imposing his own interpretation (e.g. 1 chs 36-7). Porphyry could write clear narrative Greek, but he does not do so in On Abstinence. The sentences often read awkwardly, with many subordinate clauses and long postponements. Porphyry liked infinitive phrases, and also liked to use participles as nouns. Both idioms are difficult to render in English, especially when combined with ta kata to deina, ‘things to do with such-and-such’. There is a risk of unfair judgement here, in that present-day classicists are trained on the Greek of classical Athens, which was written about seven hundred years earlier and became the standard of elegant and educated style, and much less work has been done on the Greek of the third century CE.64 But third-century Greeks were also trained on the classics, and it seems not to have helped Porphyry very much. When he quotes from Plato (1.36.4-5) the contrast is to his disadvantage, and the elegantly lucid Attic of his teacher Longinus stands out in the Life. Longinus would no doubt have agreed with this comment, but we have it on his authority (cited by Porphyry) that Amelius was much more long-winded than Porphyry.65 Longinus was also sufficiently unimpressed by the style of Plotinus to say that he must have been given defective copies, and no doubt Amelius was too busy to proof-read. According to Porphyry, the copies were correct: the problem was that Longinus did not understand Plotinus’ characteristic mode of expression, and Porphyry had not been able to go and explain it.66 In translating, I have kept as closely as possible to the text, though I have usually broken up Porphyry’s long chains of clauses. The effect is sometimes stiff and formal, but the alternative was to restructure, sometimes quite drastically, and thereby supply connections of thought which might not be Porphyry’s.67 I have translated ho theos as God or as ‘the god’ according to context, and have not attempted to translate logos, daimôn or pneuma (which are discussed in the relevant notes). I have not updated ‘fleshless diet’ and ‘inanimate food’ into ‘vegetarian’, because it is important to keep Porphyry’s central concern for the soul and its relation to the body. Nor have I used gender-inclusive language, because it would be misleading. This is not simply because Porphyry always uses the grammatical masculine: it could be argued that this implies both masculine and feminine, as English ‘man’ and ‘his’ did (at least in principle) until the mid-1960s. It is a question of attitude. If Porphyry had been asked, at the time when he was writing On Abstinence, he would no doubt have said that a simple, inanimate diet is also best for women, and that everything he says about soul and body in relation to the gods and to other animals applies to both sexes. He uses anthrôpos, the supposedly inclusive term for ‘human’, far more often than anêr, specifically a male human. But he takes it for granted that the philosopher is a man who needs to stay away from parties and politics, neither of which was an option for philosophically-minded Greek women, and to avert his attention from female bodies

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Introduction (1.33.6). He does not take the opportunity to mention Essene wives (Josephus, Jewish War 2.160-1) or Brahman women (Strabo 15.1.66), and the wives of Egyptian priests appear only because their husbands abstain from intercourse during times of purification. Perhaps his wife’s natural aptitude for philosophy (Marcella 3) eventually made a difference. 8. Text and editions For the manuscript tradition of On Abstinence, I have relied on the reports of the Budé editors: J. Bouffartigue 1977 for book 1, Bouffartigue and M. Patillon 1979 for books 2 and 3, and A. Segonds 1995 for book 4. I have followed their text except when my notes give reasons for doing otherwise, and have not tried to re-examine or add to the manuscripts they collated from what they feelingly describe as ‘cette tradition si médiocre’.68 Volumes in the Budé series provide not only text, apparatus and sources, but also (French) translation and annotation. No commentator ever answers all the questions that occur to another reader, and no translator ever agrees entirely with another, but my task would have been immensely more difficult without the textual and interpretive scholarship of the Budé editors. It is a pleasure to pay tribute to them. The Budé editors have now agreed that all available manuscripts have a common archetype, the fourteenth-century Vaticanus gr. 325 which is also the ‘least defective’.69 We do not know who chose to copy On Abstinence, and why, in the years from the third to the fourteenth century. It is usually clear why other texts have been chosen to accompany this relatively short text: the Vaticanus, for instance, combines the work of four copyists to provide Arrian’s lecture-notes of the Discourses of Epictetus, the Life of Pythagoras excerpted from Porphyry’s Philosophic History, Arrian’s Anabasis, and On Abstinence. Similarly, the first printed edition, by the great scholar Petrus Victorius (Pietro Vettori) of Florence in 1548, combined On Abstinence with Porphyry’s Sententiae, Eunapius’ life of Porphyry, and the scholia of Michael of Ephesus on Aristotle On the Parts of Animals. Victorius did not discuss the relationship of his readings to the manuscripts he used; nor did J.B. Felicianus (Giovanni Bernardino Feliciano, who also translated Porphyry On Aristotle’s Categories), who published a smooth and elegant Latin translation of On Abstinence in Venice a year earlier. F. de Fogerolles, Councillor and Physician to the King of France, provided in his edition (Lyons 1620) not only a Greek text based on Victorius, with his own Latin translation and some marginal notes, but an introductory poem on Pythagorean Abstinence, an essay On Christian Abstinence which makes his own position quite clear,70 and an imprimatur from several dignitaries of the Church, including Bishop Berthelot who found ‘nothing which could harm Catholic piety (except that he is a Gentile speaking as a Gentile)’. He also provided headings for different stages of

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Introduction the argument. This industry failed to win approval. J. Valentinus put together a bumper volume (Cambridge 1655) of Epictetus (the Enchiridion and Arrian’s Discourses) and the Pinax of Cebes with a translation and notes by J. Wolf; several works of Porphyry (Life of Pythagoras, Sententiae and The Cave of the Nymphs) with Latin translation, and an account of the life and work of Porphyry, by L. Holstenius (Lucas Holstein, librarian of the Vatican); and On Abstinence with his own Latin translation and some notes, because de Fogerolles was so bad.71 This translation divided the text into chapters. Valentinus worked only from the 1548 edition by Victorius and from the despised de Fogerolles, whose text followed Victorius: he was unable to find manuscripts or the translation by Felicianus which Holstenius had praised. The massive edition of J. de Rhoer (Utrecht 1767) returned to the manuscripts, though he too had considerable trouble locating any, and to the Latin translation by Felicianus; he retained the chapter-divisions made by Valentinus. His preface remarks on the number of scholars who had intended, but failed, to edit On Abstinence, and gives an endearing account of the colleagues who helped in his own search for manuscripts. His annotation includes all the notes made by Victorius and Valentinus (and even a few by de Fogerolles, of whom he too disapproves) and conjectures by J. Reiske and F. Abresch. He also offered the prefaces of Victorius, Felicianus and Valentinus (but not de Fogerolles); the introductory material on Porphyry, by Holstenius, which had appeared in the Cambridge edition; indices, a dedicatory poem to the councillors of Deventer, and an exchange of letters on whether Porphyry was a Christian apostate. Thomas Taylor ‘the Platonist’ said that he used ‘the best editions’ for his 1823 English translation, with occasional annotation, of On Abstinence. This probably means de Rhoer: he rarely refers to other scholars, but his note on 4 ch. 4 names Reisk [sic], de Rhoer, Felicianus and Valentinus. Taylor believed in the continuing spiritual value of Platonist texts. He worked under many difficulties, but the formal English of the early nineteenth century is often a good match for Porphyry’s Greek, and his strong sympathy for Platonism has ensured that his translation lives on.72 The Centaur Press reissued it in 1965 with an introduction by Esmé Wynne-Tyson, a pioneer of twentieth-century vegetarianism, and it has recently been reprinted in the collected edition of Taylor’s works by the Prometheus Trust (1994). The Didot edition by A. Hercher (1858) combined Porphyry with Aelian and with Philo of Byzantium, and included the translation by Felicianus. In the judgement of August Nauck (1886: xv) Hercher greatly improved the text. But it was Nauck’s own Teubner edition (revised 1886, with a much fuller apparatus criticus than his first edition of 1860) which became standard, and remained so until the appearance of the three Budé volumes. Nauck suggested many emendations and deletions about which the

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Introduction Budé editors are rightly cautious. His apparatus is full of ‘malit N.’, ‘N. would prefer’, and though Nauck’s preference would often be more elegant or more familiar Greek than the manuscript reading, I have noted his emendations only on the few occasions where (a) I have adopted them or (b) they would, if correct, make an important difference to interpretation or (c) Nauck’s printed text differs from that translated here. Much secondary literature refers to On Abstinence by pages and lines of Nauck’s revised edition, and Nauck’s page numbers appear in the margins of this translation as exactly as the text allows. Nauck used the chapter-numbers of Valentinus; the Budé editors have subdivided the chapters, and I follow their helpful practice of citing by book, chapter and paragraph (e.g. 3.2.2). 9. Acknowledgements Richard Sorabji proposed On Abstinence as an addition to the Commentators on Aristotle series, and responded to an enthusiastic letter of endorsement by suggesting that I might do it myself. His Animal Minds and Human Morals (1993) has been invaluable, and he made detailed comments on an early draft. I am especially grateful to the British Academy for the award of research leave, to complete this project, in 1997/8. I have many other debts: to Andrew Smith’s patient editing and interpretation of Porphyry; to my husband Stephen Clark for advice on what Plotinus might have meant; to Fergus Millar, who has for many years maintained the great interest of On Abstinence for all students of Graeco-Roman cultural history; to the scholars, at that time unnamed, who commented on the first draft of the translation; and to the friends and colleagues who responded to improbable queries and sent me offprints and references, among them Ewen Bowie, Emma Clarke, Stephen Cooper, Nan Dunbar, John Dillon, Chris Eyre, Rebecca Flemming, Peter Garnsey, Linda Jones Hall, Alan Millard, Catherine Osborne, Robert Parker, Tessa Rajak, Trevor Saunders, Malcolm Schofield, Eckart Schütrumpf, David Sedley, Bob Sharples, Simon Swain. Tim Addey, of the Prometheus Trust, kindly sent me the Trust’s elegant reissue of Thomas Taylor’s translation. Elisabeth LeedhamGreen made it particularly easy and pleasant to locate the early printed editions in the Cambridge University Library. William Stephens, and his students at Creighton University, bravely tried out a partial early draft of the translation. Margaret Atkins made precise and perceptive comments on an early version of book 1, and nobly offered to read more. Henry Blumenthal, benevolent as always, had agreed to look over a final draft, even though On Abstinence exemplifies those aspects of Neoplatonism that he found least congenial. This book is affectionately dedicated to the memory of a scholar who was also a lover of wisdom.

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Introduction Notes 1. English translation of the Life by Hilary Armstrong in the first volume of his Loeb edition of Plotinus (see Bibliography); French translation, with very full commentary, in Brisson 1992. 2. Plotinus’ ‘care for orphans’ is touching, but is often overinterpreted: these were orphans with trust funds, and Greek orphanos means a child who has lost a father, not a child who has lost both parents. 3. On the lifestyles of Plotinus and his students, see further Clark 2000; for Castricius, see Abst. 1.1.1. 4. Felicianus entitled the first Latin translation (1547) de abstinentia ab esu animalium, ‘on abstinence from eating animals’; his contemporary Petrus Victorius (Pietro Vettori, 1548) used the title de non necandis ad epulandum animantibus, ‘on not killing animates for feasting’. Colloquial English ‘laying off animals’ is almost right. 5. Plotinus surveyed theories in Ennead 4.8.1; see Abst. 1.30.6-7 notes. 6. Hence it was difficult for Christians in first-century Corinth to know whether they were eating ‘food offered to idols’: 1 Corinthians 8, with Meggitt 1994. 7. Ennead 4.8.8: ‘if one may venture to express more clearly one’s own opinion, opposed to that of others, even our soul does not altogether come down, but there is always something of it in the intelligible world; but if the part which is in the perceptible world takes control, or rather if it is itself controlled and disturbed, it does not allow us to perceive what the upper part of the soul contemplates.’ See further Abst. 1 chs 41-2 and notes. 8. Amelius was, or became, philothutos, Life 10.33 (Armstrong neatly translates as ‘ritualist’); Castricius assisted Amelius in everything ‘like a good house-slave’, Life 7.25-6. For Castricius’ motives, see Abst. 1.1.1. 9. Life 7.25-8; see further 1.1.1 and note. 10. Life 4, with Brisson 1982: 190-1. For speculation on his early life, see Bidez 1913. 11. Life 17.6-10; for P.’s various names, and for his cultural identity, see further Millar 1997; Clark 1999. 12. Longinus keeping in touch, Life 19.4-6; Plotinus on Longinus, ib. 14.18-20, with Pépin 1992 on whether philologos is a compliment; Longinus on Plotinus, Life 20.4-5. 13. Longinus’ invitation, Life 19.4-5, 21.20-2; Amelius, Life 20.6, 2.32. 14. Return, Life 2.12. Porphyrius Siculus: Augustine, Agreement of the Evangelists 1.15.23; Retractations 2.25.1. 15. P.’s letter to his recently-married wife is often dated to the 290s, on the strength of a comment (1.1) that he had not married in the expectation of care ‘as I decline into old age’. This does not prove that he was so declining. 16. But perhaps the compilers of this encyclopedia entry associated Porphyry the anti-Christian with Diocletian the persecutor? On the tempting, but unprovable, theory that Porphyry advised Diocletian before the Great Persecution of 303, see Barnes 1994. 17. On Eunapius, see further Fowden 1982, Miller 1998. 18. nobilissimus philosophus paganorum, Augustine, City of God 22.3; Porphyry first appears at 7.25, is the main target of book 10, and recurs in books 13, 19 and 22. In Confessions 8.2.3 Augustine says that Marius Victorinus translated the ‘Platonist books’, Platonicorum libri, that he was given at Milan (ib. 7.9.13);

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Introduction there is much debate on what exactly these were, but they certainly included some Porphyry (see further O’Donnell 1992.II: 421-4). 19. ‘maître de la pensée occidentale’, Courcelle 1943: 440; ib. 394-9 for a summary of P.’s influence in the west. 20. The critical sentence reads, in literal translation, ‘I, Porphyry, declare that I once drew near and was united [to God], being in my sixty-eighth year.’ Commentators differ on whether this was his age when he made the declaration or when he had the experience. 21. Smith 1987: 723. 22. Bidez 1913 listed 77 titles; R. Beutler (RE 22.1 cols. 275-313, Porphyrios 21), listed 68, but with several queries about duplicates and inauthentic works. Debate continues especially on whether The Return of the Soul and Against the Christians are titles of separate works, or descriptions of (partial) content: see further Beatrice 1992. On the problems of identifying and assigning fragments, see Smith 1993: v-xvii. He lists 69 titles, with a further 6 doubtful or spurious. 23. For a sympathetic account of P.’s relation to other authors, in the context of third-century culture and practice, see Romano 1979. 24. Bidez 1913: 10*-23* (Cult-Statues), 27*-44* (Return of the Soul). Fragments of the Philosophic History ed. Nauck 1886: 3-16; discussion and translation by Segonds in des Places 1966: 163-97, and see Clark 2000. For other scholars who contributed to editing the fragments of Porphyry, see Smith 1993: vii. 25. Fragments of To Anebo ed. Sodano 1958. 26. See on 4.22.7. 27. Bidez 1913: 133. ‘Dans tout ce qui nous reste de ses écrits, il n’y a pas une pensée, pas une image dont on puisse affirmer a coup sûr qu’elle est de lui.’ 28. See especially Hadot 1968; Smith 1974; Edwards 1990. 29. Fowden 1986, Millar 1997. 30. Life 18, with the note by J. Pépin in Brisson 1992: 279-81; Life 20.91-9 for Longinus. For Plotinus on self-intellection, see further Crystal 1998. 31. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.9. Theurgy: Augustine, City of God 10.9. Reincarnation: Smith 1984: 217-84; the soul, Porphyry fr. 441 Smith (and see Smith 1974: 47-55; Carlier 1998). 32. So Bernays 1866: 4-6, followed by Bidez 1913: 99 and Bouffartigue 1977: xviii-xix. Smith 1987: 721 is properly cautious. On the argument that P. also, while in Sicily, wrote Against the Christians, see Barnes 1994. 33. See on 3.4.7. 34. Ennead 3.2.15, tr. Armstrong. 35. Plotinus on reincarnation: see, for instance, Ennead 6.7.6-7. Porphyry did not accept the argument for reincarnation: see further Abst. 1.6.3 note and Smith 1984. 36. See on 1.3.3. 37. For plant souls, see on 3.19.2. 38. See on 1.6.3. 39. Augustine, City of God 1.20; Catholic and Manichean Morals 2.17. 40. P. often uses ‘the other animals’ rather than the standard expression ‘irrational animals’ (but see 2.2.3 note), as a modern writer might use ‘non-human animals’ in preference to ‘animals’. 41. Ennead 4.4.28.33-4; ‘temperaments’ translates kraseis, a disputed reading. 42. Augustine takes it for granted that animals cannot pray: see further Clark 1998. 43. Arguments from reincarnation: 1.6.3, 1.19.1-3, 4.16.2; Augustine City of God 10.20. Religious silence, 2.36.4; but allusions to Pythagorean teaching need not

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Introduction imply that P. belonged to a Pythagorean community (as suggested by Bouffartigue 1977: xxii). Platonists also had a tradition of esoteric teaching (Cherlonneix 1992, O’Brien 1992). See on 1.1.1, and see further Clark 2000. 44. Seneca, Letter 108.13-22. 45. See section 6 below for the general question of Porphyry’s borrowings; specific borrowings are discussed in the notes on the relevant sections. 46. On the Epicurean argument, see 1.12.6 note. 47. 3.1.4 note. 48. The cardinal virtue andreia, courage or manliness, has no separate treatment, but P. characterises the philosopher as enduring, disciplined, self-controlled and resolute, and follows Plato (Rep. 589A7) in contrasting the ‘inner male’ with the soul feminised by submission to desire (1.34.2, 1.57.3, 4.20.3). In Sent. 32 (p. 25.3-5 Lamberz) he says that philosophic andreia is being unafraid of detachment from the body. 49. See above, n. 43. 50. See on 4.22.7. Cynics were frugal omnivores not vegetarians, their motivation was not Platonist, and P.’s only mention of them (1.42.5) is hostile. 51. omne corpus esse fugiendum, City of God 10.29. 52. Natural and philosophic death: Sent. 9 (p. 5 Lamberz). Suicide: Abst. 1.38.2, 2.47.1. 53. On the experimental phase of Christian asceticism, see Rousseau 1994. 54. Beatrice 1992, Barnes 1994. ‘Their great later philosopher Porphyry, the most bitter enemy [acerrimus inimicus] of the Christian faith’: Augustine, sermon 241.7. 55. Chaldaean Oracles, see on 2.34.3; Zoroastrian texts, Life 16; see further Clark 2000 on P. and Christianity, 1999 on P. and ‘barbarian wisdom’. 56. Bouffartigue 1977: 37-41. 57. City of God 10.26-9; on philosophic and Christian asceticism see further Clark 2000. Chadwick 1959: 97-106 illustrates how much the two traditions had in common. 58. On Christian fasting, see further T. Shaw 1998. 59. Augustine, in City of God 10.30, says that P. acknowledged his failure to find a ‘universal way’ of liberating the soul. This does not mean salvation for everyone: the ‘universal way’ is contrasted with culture-specific ways, and salvation is still for a spiritual elite. 60. Confessions 1.18.28; Luke 15.11-32. The difference between the Platonist and the Christian comparison is that the Prodigal Son’s father runs to meet the returning exile as soon as he is visible. 61. Amelius, Life 17.1-6, 16-22. Lecture on Literature (philologos akroasis): fr. 408F-410F Smith). Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 10.3.1) headed his citations ‘Porphyry says that Greeks are thieves’. 62. Similarly, in his Church History, he cited relevant documents verbatim to support his case. 63. See on 3.18.1. 64. See further Goulet-Cazé 1992. 65. Life 20.78-80, paraphrased 21.16-18 66. Life 19.22-4, 20.5-7. 67. Owen Goldin’s livelier translation of extracts from books 1 and 3 provides a comparison. See Goldin 1997: 45-63. 68. Bouffartigue 1977: lxxxiii; cf. Nauck 1886: xiii-xiv. 69. Bouffartigue 1977: lxxxiii; cf. Segonds 1995: lvii-ix, and Nauck 1886: xiii, ‘one interpolated and seriously corrupt text’.

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Introduction 70. It begins ‘Those who from hatred of prayer and fasting turn themselves from human to porcine bodies, from religious abstinence to bestial meat-eating – the Aetians, the Waldenses, the Begardi and other cancers of sobriety – are evidently the offspring of demons.’ 71. In his ‘Preface to the Reader’ he cites Holstenius: ‘Someone in France has lately defiled this excellent work with a most inept translation, or rather a permanent delirium. Among the many ills with which an offended deity has thus far afflicted the shade and the name of Porphyry, this one is facile princeps: to have fallen into the hands of so bad a doctor.’ It has to be admitted that de Fogerolles’ translation is not reliable. 72. See further Raine and Harper 1969. Raine observes (p. 18) ‘Yeats called his style atrocious, and Coleridge wrote that Taylor translated Proclus “from difficult Greek into incomprehensible English” ’.

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Porphyry On Abstinence from Killing Animals Translation

BOOK 1 1 I heard from visitors, Firmus,1 that you had condemned fleshless food and reverted to consuming flesh. At first I did not believe it, judging by your temperance and by the respect we had shown for those men, at once ancient and godfearing, who pointed out the way.2 (2) Then others, following on the first, gave the same information and confirmed the report. It seemed crude, and remote from rational persuasion, to scold you because you have not, as the saying is, ‘found the better by flight from the bad’, or, as Empedocles put it, lamented your former life and turned to a better.3 (3) Instead, I thought it a proper return for our friendship with each other, and suitable for those who order their lives in accordance with truth, to reveal through reason the refutation of your errors, and to declare from what and to what you have descended.4 2 For as I reflect by myself on the cause of your change, I cannot say that you would do so for health and strength, as the uninstructed multitude would say.5 On the contrary, you yourself used to acknowledge, when you were with us, that the fleshless diet contributes to health and to a suitable endurance of hard work in philosophy; and experience shows that in saying that, you spoke the truth. (2) So it seemed that you had reverted to your former offences either because you were deluded, or because you thought that following one regime or another made no difference to wisdom, or perhaps for some other cause, not known to me, which has inflicted a fear greater than the impiety of your transgression.6 (3) I would certainly not say that lack of control, or longing7 for gourmet gluttony, led you to spurn the ancestral laws of the philosophy to which you were committed.8 Nor would I call you inferior in nature to those uninstructed persons in some countries who accept laws opposite to those by which they lived before: then they endure castration, and abstain from certain animals, which they used to devour, even more than they would from human meat.9 3 But some of my visitors also told me what you were saying about those who do abstain. Now there were grounds not only for complaint, but for rebuke, if, persuaded by stale and entirely outdated sophisms, you could bear to delude yourselves,10 and to overturn a teaching which is ancient and dear to the gods. (2) So I decided not only to show you what our own position is, but to collect and refute the arguments of our opponents, which are much stronger in number and force and other resources than those given by you; and this will show that truth

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is not defeated even by seemingly weighty arguments, let alone by outdated and superficial sophistries. (3) You may not realise that many people have argued against abstinence from animate [foods], and that, among philosophers, the Peripatetics, the Stoics and the Epicureans11 have made most effort to oppose the philosophy of Pythagoras and Empedocles of which you were an eager follower;12 so have many scholars, and Clodius the Neapolitan13 in particular has launched a book against those who abstain from flesh. (4) I shall set out their practical and general questions about the teaching, leaving aside those which specifically attack the arguments of Empedocles.14 4 Our opponents, then, say that justice is at once confounded, and we move that which must not be moved,15 if we make justice extend not only to the rational but also to the irrational; (2) that is, if we reckon not only humans and gods as our concern,16 but also treat as family17 the other beasts which are in no way related to us, instead of using some for work and some for food and regarding them as of another kind, without rights in our community as they are without rights of citizenship.18 (3) Someone who deals with such creatures as he would with human beings, sparing them and not harming them, imposes on justice a burden it cannot bear, ruins what justice can do, and makes that which is alien destroy that which is appropriate.19 (4) For either we do not spare them and injustice becomes necessary for us, or we do not make use of them and life becomes impossible and lacking in resources, and we shall, in a sense, live the life of beasts by rejecting the use of beasts.20 5 I leave aside the countless myriads of Nomads and Troglodytes, who know flesh food and nothing else.21 (2) But for us, who think we have a civilised and humane way of life, what work is left on land or in the sea, what effective22 craft, what refinement of our way of life, if we behave to animals as to creatures of the same kind,23 treating them without harm and with respect? Almost no work.24 (3) We have no medicine, no cure for this dilemma which destroys either life or justice, unless we maintain the ancient law and limit by which Zeus (according to Hesiod25) when he separated the natures and made each distinct from the other kinds, To fish, to beasts, to winged birds granted to eat each other, for there is no justice among them; To human beings gave justice

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towards each other. 6 We cannot act unjustly towards creatures which cannot act justly towards us. So those who reject this argument leave no path, whether broad or narrow, by which justice can edge in.26 (2) As I have already said, our nature is not self-sufficient, but needs many things: if it is

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Book 1 barred from the help of animals, it is destroyed outright, restricted to a life without resources, without tools, without possession of necessities.27 They say that the first people to exist did not have a happy life, (3) for28 superstition does not stop short at animals, but imposes itself even on plants. For how does a man who slaughters an ox or a sheep do greater injustice than one who cuts down a fir or an oak, if these also have a soul by reincarnation?29 These, then, are the most important arguments of the Stoics and the Peripatetics.30 7 The followers of Epicurus,31 as if they were going through a long genealogy, say that the ancient lawgivers, having considered human life in community and people’s dealings with each other, declared that the slaughter of a human being is sacrilege, and imposed exceptional penalties.32 Perhaps there is also a natural appropriation of human to human, because of their likeness of appearance and of soul, which inclines them away from readily destroying such an animal as if it were one or other of those it is acceptable to kill.33 (2) But the main reason for indignation at this act, and for its being declared sacrilege, is that it was not thought advantageous for the general organisation of life. (3) From such a starting-point, some people understood the advantage of the decree, and required no other reason to keep them from this act; others, unable to achieve a sufficient perception of it, refrained from readily killing each other because they feared the severity of the penalty. (4) Both reactions, it seems, happen even now. Some people contemplate the advantage of this ruling and willingly keep to it, and those not capable of this response fear the menaces of the laws. These menaces were decreed by a few because of those who do not reason out what is useful, and the majority have accepted them. 8 From the outset, no force was used to establish any of the laws, written or unwritten, which are still in use and are suited for handing on: the people who would use34 them also agreed to them. (2) Wisdom of soul, not strength of body or tyrannical enslavement of the masses, distinguished those who introduced such measures to the many. Some people were previously aware of what is useful, but without using reason and often forgetting: these they brought to analyse it,35 the others they frightened by the severity of the punishments. (3) No remedy could be used against ignorance of advantage, except fear of the penalty laid down in the law.36 Even now this alone restrains ordinary people, and prevents them from doing anything unprofitable either in public or in private life. (4) If everyone alike could see advantage and keep it in mind, they would not need laws as well, but would of their own accord respect what is forbidden and act upon what is enjoined; for contemplation of the useful and the harmful is enough to bring about avoidance of the latter and choice of the former. (5) The threat of the penalty is for those who do not foresee what is profitable. It hangs over them and compels them to master the impulses37 which

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lead to disadvantageous actions, and it also forces them to do what should be done. 9 The legislators did not exclude even unintentional homicide from any punishment, so as not to concede any excuse to those who intentionally choose to imitate the deeds of those who act unintentionally, and also to prevent many genuinely unintended killings happening through negligence or inattention. Unintentional killing too would not be advantageous, for the same reasons as intentional killing of one another. (2) Some unintended acts happen from a cause that human nature cannot assess or guard against, others from our own neglect and failure to understand what is important. Since they wanted to prevent the negligence which harms our neighbours, they laid down that not even unintentional acts were exempt from penalty, and they more or less eradicated this fault through fear of punishment. (3) I myself think that those who first, and rightly, required that even killings condoned by the law are liable to the customary expiation by purifications, did so for no other reason than to dissuade people as much as possible from the voluntary act.38 Ordinary people needed restraints on every side to stop them willingly doing what is not advantageous. (4) So the first people who understood this not only established penalties, but also induced another, irrational, fear by declaring that those who had in any way killed a human being were not pure if they had not undergone purification. (5) The unintellectual part of the soul, ingeniously tutored, reached its present domesticated state because those who in the beginning established order39 among the masses devised ways of taming the irrational movement of appetite; and among these ways is the principle of not killing each other indiscriminately.40 10 Those who first defined what we should and should not do did not forbid killing any of the other animals; understandably, for advantage in relation to them was achieved by the opposite action.41 It was not possible to be secure without attempting defence42 by forming groups. (2) Some of the brightest people of that time, keeping in mind that they themselves43 abstained from killing because this is useful for security, reminded the others what would result from their association with each other, so that by abstaining from their kin they would safeguard the community which was working for the individual security of each.44 (3) Separating themselves out, and doing nothing to injure those who had gathered in the same place, was useful not only for excluding animals of other kinds, but also for dealing with human beings who came to do harm. (4) For a time, then, they held back from their kinsman inasmuch as he was entering the same community for providing necessities and was making some contribution to both the purposes mentioned. But as time went on and reproduction greatly increased, and other kinds of animals (and their

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Book 1 dragging away of victims) had been driven out, some people acquired a rational analysis of what was advantageous in their sustenance of each other, not just a non-rational memory.45 11 So they tried to achieve more secure restraints on those who readily destroyed each other and who weakened mutual assistance because they forgot the past. In attempting to do this, they brought in the legislation which is still in force among cities and peoples, and the masses followed them voluntarily because they were already more aware of the advantage to be had in assembling together. (2) Ruthless killing of all harmful creatures, and protection of everything which was useful for destroying them, worked together to provide absence of fear. So it was reasonable to forbid the killing of the latter but not prevent the killing of the former. (3) But it cannot be argued that the law has allowed us to destroy some animals which do not kill human beings or damage people’s lives in any other way. There is hardly a creature, of those the law allows us to kill, which would not be harmful to us if allowed to be excessively abundant; but if they are maintained in their present numbers, they are of some use to our existence. (4) For example, sheep and cattle and all other such, in moderate numbers, do provide some help with the necessities of our daily life, but if they became very plentiful and far in excess of the established numbers, they would damage our lives, both by standing and fighting us, as they are naturally well equipped to do, and simply by consuming what the earth produces for our food. (5) So for this reason too it was not forbidden to kill even this kind of animal, to ensure that the number left should be advantageous for our use and easily controllable.46 In the case of lions, wolves and wild animals in general, big and small alike, we cannot establish any number which would, if left untouched, relieve the necessities of our life, but we can for cattle and horses and sheep and domesticated animals in general. That is why we destroy the first outright, and remove the excess of the second. 12 It was for reasons similar to these, we should reckon, that the first people to deal with these questions by law also made their rulings on the use of animate creatures as food: advantage or disadvantage decided that some were not edible.47 (2) So it is extremely foolish to say that, in legislation, goodness and justice depend on individual beliefs. This is not the case: it is the same as with other advantageous things, such as matters of health and thousands of others,48 but people often go wrong about general and individual interests. (3) Some people fail to distinguish the legislative enactments which fit everyone alike: some disregard them, thinking they are among the ‘indifferents’,49 others take the opposite view and think that laws which are not universally advantageous are advantageous everywhere. For this reason they hold on to laws which do not fit them, though they do in some cases invent laws which are both profitable to themselves

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and for the general benefit. (4) These [non-universal laws] include rules on eating and killing animate creatures: among most peoples these have been formulated according to the particular character of the land, and we need not follow them because we do not even live in the same place.50 (5) Now if people had been able to make a contract with other animals, as with human beings, not to kill and not to be killed indiscriminately by us, it would have been fine to push justice to that point, because it would tend to safety.51 (6) But since it was an impossibility for animals that are not receptive of reason to share in law, this method could not be used to secure our advantage in respect of safety from other animate creatures, any more than from the inanimate. That is why the only way to achieve such safety as is possible is to take the licence which we now have to kill them.52 (7) Such, then, are the arguments of the Epicureans. 13 It remains to set out what the ordinary man of the people usually says.53 People say that the ancients abstained from animate creatures not out of piety, but because they did not yet know the use of fire. But when they learned, they thought it most venerable and most holy, and called it Hestia, and became ‘hearth-sharers’54 from this, and thereafter made use of animals. (2) Eating meat is natural for humans, but eating it raw is unnatural. So when fire was discovered55 they took what was natural by cooking, and ate meat. (3) That is why it is said ‘jackals who eat raw’, and, in reproach, ‘having devoured Priam raw’ and ‘cutting up the flesh to eat it raw’, as if [eating meat raw] was assigned to the godless, [lacuna] ‘he took the platters of all kinds of meat and served them’.56 (4) So at first people did not eat animate creatures, because humans were not raw-meateating animals. But when the use of fire was discovered, they ate not only meat, but almost all their other foodstuffs, cooked. (5) That humans are not raw-meat-eaters is demonstrated by some fish-eating peoples: they roast fish, some when the stones are blazing hot from the sun, others in sand.57 That humans are flesh-eaters is demonstrated from the fact that no people abstains from animate creatures. The Greeks did not take to it as a perversion, for barbarians have the same custom. 14 Someone who says we should not eat [animals], thinking it unjust, will also say that it is unjust to kill them and to take away their souls. But between us and the beasts there is a war which is innate and also just.58 Some beasts intentionally attack humans, as wolves and lions do; some attack unintentionally, like snakes, which sometimes bite because they have been trodden on. Some attack humans, some destroy crops. For all these reasons we go after them: we kill beasts, both those that take the initiative and those that do not, to avoid suffering any harm from them. (2) Anyone who sees a snake kills it if he can, so that neither he nor any other human being

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Book 1 should be bitten; for we have not only hatred for the creatures which are killed, but also affection of human for human. (3) But though the war against the beasts is just, we abstain from many that live with humans. That is why the Greeks do not eat dogs, or horses, or donkeys.59 They do eat pigs, because domestic pigs are of the same race as wild pig, and likewise birds. Indeed, pigs are not useful for anything except for eating.60 (4) Phoenicians and Jews abstain [from pigs], because there were none at all in those places; and even now, they say, this animal is not found in Ethiopia. So, just as no Greek has sacrificed a camel or elephant to the gods, because Greece does not produce these creatures, so in Cyprus and Phoenicia this animal was not offered to the gods, because it was not local, and the Egyptians do not sacrifice pigs to the gods for the same reason.61 So some people abstain entirely from this animal, but it is as if we refused to eat camels. 15 Why would anyone abstain from animate creatures? Do they make the soul worse, or the body? Obviously, neither. Flesh-eating animals are more intelligent than the others: they are hunters, and have this skill with which they get a living and acquire strength and fighting spirit, like lions and wolves. So meat-eating does not damage either the soul or the body.62 (2) This is also clear from the fact that athletes make their bodies stronger by meat-eating, and from doctors, who prescribe meat-eating to restore bodies which are recovering from illness. (3) There is also strong evidence that Pythagoras’ views were unsound: none of the sages was convinced, either from the Seven or from the later natural scientists, not even Socrates, wisest of all, or his successors.63 16 But suppose all human beings were convinced by this teaching: what fate would the progeny of the animals have? Everyone knows how many young the pig and the hare produce; add to them all the other animals together. Where is the fodder to come from for all these, and what will happen to the farmers? (2) For if when the crops are being destroyed they do not kill the destroyers, the earth will not sustain the great number of animals, and dying bodies will cause epidemics from putrefaction, and as plague takes a grip there will be no refuge, for the sea and rivers and lakes will be full of fish, the air full of birds, and the earth full of creatures of every kind. 17 And how many people will be hampered in their medical treatment if they abstain from animals? We can see that when people are going blind, they preserve their sight by consuming viper.64 (2) A slave of the doctor Craterus65 fell ill of an unknown disease: his flesh separated from the bones, and he got no help at all from medicines. But he was saved by eating a viper cooked like fish, and his flesh re-adhered. (3) Many other animals cure when eaten, and so do the

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individual parts of animals. Someone who refuses animate food deprives himself of all this. 18 And if, as they say, plants have a soul too,66 what would life be like if we did not cut up either animals or plants! But if the one who cuts down plants does nothing impious, neither does the one who cuts down animals. 19 But someone will say that we must not kill one of the same kind, if, that is, the souls of animals are of the same essence67 as ours. But if you grant that souls voluntarily enter [bodies],68 you would say it is for love of being young that they enter, for the enjoyment of everything lies in that. Why, then, would they not clothe themselves again with human nature? (2) If, however, they enter voluntarily and for love of being young, but go through every kind of animal, they should be delighted to be taken away.69 For their return to humanity would be quicker, and having the bodies eaten would not engender distress in the souls, because they would have got rid of the bodies. The love of being in human nature would be in them, so however distressed they were to leave humanity, they would be equally happy to leave other bodies, because this would hasten their return to humanity, which rules over all irrational beings as God rules over humans.70 So there is sufficient reason for eliminating other animals, insofar as they do wrong by killing people. (3) If the souls of human beings are immortal, and the souls of irrational creatures are mortal, we humans do no wrong in killing the irrational; and if they are immortal, we benefit them by killing them, because we do it for their return to human nature.71 20 If we act in self-defence, we do no injustice, but we pursue the one who acts unjustly. So if souls are immortal, we benefit them by killing; and if the souls of irrational creatures are mortal, we do nothing impious in killing. (2) And if we are also acting in self-defence, how can we not be acting with justice? We kill snakes and scorpions even if they do not attack us, so that no one else should suffer harm from them, in defence of the common race of humanity. How then could it not be just to kill creatures that attack humans or the animals which live with humans or crops?72 21 If someone thinks this is outright injustice, he must not make use of milk or wool or eggs or honey. As you injure a human by taking his clothes, so you injure a sheep by shearing, for that is the sheep’s clothing. Milk was not produced for you, but for the newborn offspring. The honey-bee collected as food for herself what you take away to provide pleasure for yourself. (2) I have kept silent about the Egyptian saying that we injure plants by taking them.73 But if plants exist for our sake, so does the honey-bee make honey as our slave, and wool grows on sheep for our adornment and warmth. 22 We sacrifice animals, offering them in piety, to the very gods;

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Book 1 and among the gods Apollo is wolf-slayer and Artemis beast-slayer.74 (2) Moreover, the demigods and heroes, all superior to us in birth and in excellence, approved the offering75 of animate creatures, and consequently they sacrificed dozens and even hekatombs to the gods. Herakles in particular is celebrated (amongst other things) for being an ox-eater.76 23 As for saying that long ago Pythagoras took this precaution in an attempt to stop people eating each other, this is silly.77 For if in the time of Pythagoras everyone was a cannibal, it would be crazy to drag people away from eating other animals in order to detach them from cannibalism. This method was more likely to encourage them, by showing that cannibalism is just the same as devouring the flesh of pigs and cattle. (2) But if there was no cannibalism at that time, what need was there for this teaching? And if it was for himself and his companions that he established the rule, that is a disgraceful theory, because it shows that Pythagoreans were cannibals. 24 The opposite of what Pythagoras intended would happen. For if we abstain from animate creatures, not only shall we be deprived of such riches and pleasure, but we shall also lose cultivated land which the wild beasts destroy. All the earth will be taken over by snakes and birds, so that ploughing will be difficult, and the sown seed will be picked up at once by the birds, and the plants that grow will all be consumed by the animals. When there is such a dearth of food, bitter necessity will constrain people to turn upon each other.78 25 Besides, the gods have given many people instructions to use beasts for medicine, and history is full of how they instructed people to sacrifice to them and to eat the sacrificed creatures. (2) When the sons of Herakles returned, those who marched on Lacedaemon with Eurysthenes and Prokles were at a loss for supplies, and ate snakes which the earth provided at that time as food for the army.79 (3) When another army was starving in Libya, a swarm of locusts fell upon it. (4) And this is what happened among the Gadeiroi. Bogos (the one who was killed by Agrippa at Methone) was king of the Maurousioi.80 He attacked the Herakleion, a very rich sanctuary. Now it is a rule for the priests to stain the altar every day with blood. (5) This crisis showed that it is not a human decision, but divine will. As the siege dragged on, there was a shortage of sacrificial victims. The priest, who was at a loss, had a dream like this. (6) He seemed to be standing between the Pillars of Herakles,81 then he saw a bird sitting right in front of the altar and trying to fly. When it did fly, it came into his hands, and he used it to shed blood on the altar. (7) Having dreamed this, he got up at daybreak and went to the altar, and just as in the dream he stood on the high place and looked out. And he saw that bird, as in the dream, and stood still in the hope the dream would be fulfilled. The bird flew down, settled on the altar, and gave itself into

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the hands of the high priest, and so it was sacrificed and the altar was stained with blood. (8) Better known than this is what happened at Cyzicus. While Mithridates was besieging the city,82 it was time for the festival of Persephone, at which a cow must be sacrificed. The sacred herds were pastured opposite the city: the sacrificial victim had to come from them, and the mark was already on it. (9) When the time required, the cow lowed and swam across the channel, and when the guards opened the gate, she rushed through and stood by the altar, and the sacrifice to the goddess was carried out. (10) So it is not unreasonable for people to think that it is most pious to make the most sacrifices, because sacrifice is evidently pleasing to the gods. 26 And what kind of city would there be, if all the citizens held this opinion?83 How would they fend off an attacking enemy, if they were taking the greatest precautions to avoid killing one of them? They would be overthrown at once. It would take too long to say how many other unpleasant things would be bound to happen. (2) But Pythagoras’ own behaviour shows that it is not impious to kill and eat. In the old days athletes were given milk to drink and cheeses soaked in water to eat; later, this regime went out of favour and athletes were given dried figs. Pythagoras was the first to abandon the old ways and give meat to athletes in training, and found that it had far greater power to give strength.84 (3) And some say that the Pythagoreans themselves partake of animate creatures whenever they sacrifice to the gods.85 (4) Such, then, are the arguments of Clodius and Heracleides Ponticus and Hermarchus the Epicurean86 and the Stoics and Peripatetics, and they include your arguments so far as they have been reported to me. I intend to reply to them and to the ideas of the multitude, but it seems reasonable to say this as preface.87 27 First, then, you should know that my discourse will not offer advice to every human way of life: not to those who engage in banausic crafts, nor to athletes of the body,88 nor to soldiers, nor sailors, nor orators, nor to those who have chosen the life of public affairs, but to the person who has thought about who he is and whence he has come and where he should try to go, and who has principles about food, and about other proper behaviour,89 which are different from those in other ways of life. (2) So I shall not complain at anyone who is not like that, for even in this common life the same advice does not apply both to the sleeper who tries to achieve sleep throughout his life, if he can, surrounding himself with things which induce sleep, and also to the man who is eager to shake off sleep, and organises everything around himself for wakefulness. (3) For the first, drunkenness and hangover and surfeit must be basic, and one must advise him to choose a dark house and a bed which is ‘soft and wide’ and ‘lush’, as the poets90 say, and to make use of every narcotic which causes lethargy and oblivion,

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Book 1 whether inhaled or rubbed in or drunk or eaten. (4) The other should be advised to provide sober drink and no wine, light food which comes close to fasting, a well-lit house with fresh air and a breeze, constant arousing of thought and concern, and a simple, rough bed.91 (5) Now whether we are born for this, I mean for staying as awake as possible (with slight concessions to sleep because we are not in the country of those who are awake for ever), or whether instead we are made for sleeping – that would be another discussion requiring long demonstrations.92 28 But the person who has once for all become suspicious of the enchantment93 cast by the way we pass our time here and by the house in which we lead our lives, who has recognised his own natural wakefulness and has detected the soporific quality of the place in which he spends his time, it is to him that we speak and hand on the food which conforms to his suspicion of the place and indeed to his knowledge of himself.94 (2) We invite him to leave the sleepers lying in their own beds. We are wary in case, just as people catch ophthalmia when they look at those who have ophthalmia, or start to yawn when they are with people yawning, we are likewise filled with somnolence and sleep, for the place where we spend our time is full of chill, and is just right for making the eyes discharge, because it is also marshy, and its exhalations depress everyone in it with heaviness of head and forgetfulness.95 (3) So if legislators too, in organising laws for the cities, were leading them towards the contemplative life and to living in accordance with the intellect, obviously we would need to obey them and to accept their concessions about foods. (4) But if they have in view life according to nature, the ‘middle’ life as it is called,96 and make laws that would be chosen even by the ordinary people whose concept of good or bad relates to external things and likewise to bodily concerns, why would anyone cite their law to subvert a way of life which is superior to every written law designed for the many, because it aims at the unwritten, divine law? 29 It is like this. The contemplation which is happiness for us is not (as someone might think) a collection of arguments or a mass of learning assembled for the purpose, nor does it make progress by quantity of arguments; for if that were so, nothing would prevent those who accumulated all kinds of learning from being happy. (2) As it is, not every item of learning brings contemplation to fulfilment, not even those which are concerned with what really exists, unless there is added the natural tendency and life which accords with them.97 (3) They say there are three ends, corresponding to particular aims:98 our end is to achieve the contemplation of that which really is, and this achievement brings about, so far as our capacity allows, the joining of contemplator and contemplated. (4) For the return is to one’s real self, nothing else; and the joining is with one’s real self,

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nothing else. And one’s real self is the intellect, so the end is to live in accordance with the intellect.99 (5) Arguments and learning that come from the external world are also relevant to this, but their role is to purify us, not to fulfill happiness.100 So, if being happy was defined as the grasp of arguments, it would be possible to achieve the end while disregarding foods and kinds of actions. (6) But since we must be purified by words and actions and change our present life for another, let us consider what words and what actions establish us in it. 30 Would they not be those [words and actions] which separate us from perceptible things and from the passions associated with them, but raise us towards an intellectual life, free, so far as possible, from impression and from passion?101 Are not their opposites alien and deserving of rejection, the more so because, inasmuch as they detach us from the first [the intellectual life], they drag us down to the other [the life of impression and passion]?102 I think we may agree that it follows. (2) For we are like those who, whether intentionally or unintentionally, have gone away to a foreign people, and not only are excluded from what is their own, but have been filled by the foreign land with alien passions and habits and customs, and have acquired an inclination towards them.103 (3) Someone who is preparing to return from there to his homeland is not only eager to be on the journey, but also, in order to be accepted, practises putting aside everything foreign that he has acquired, and reminds himself of what he once had but has forgotten, and without which he cannot be accepted among his own people.104 (4) In the same way we too, if we are going to reascend from here to what is really ours, must put aside everything we have acquired from our mortal nature, and the attraction to those things which itself brought about our descent, and must recollect the blessed and eternal being and eagerly return to that which is without colour or quality, engaging in two exercises.105 (5) One is putting aside everything material and mortal, the other is working to return and survive, ascending there in the opposite way to that by which we descended here. (6) For we were, and we still are, intellectual beings, pure from all perception and unreason.106 But we became involved with sensibles because of our incapacity for eternal union with the intelligible and our capacity, so to call it, for what is here.107 (7) For when the soul does not remain in the intelligible, all the capacities which are active through perception and the body germinate; they are like the effects of impoverishment in the earth, which often, though sown with wheat-seed, produces tares. The cause is a depravity of the soul, which does not destroy its own essence by producing unreason, but still, through unreason, is linked to mortality and dragged from its own to what is alien.108 31 So if we are eager to turn back to our original state, we must

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Book 1 practise, as far as we can, detachment from perception and impression and the unreason which follows on these and the passions associated with it, in so far as the compulsion of generation does not drive us on.109 (2) We must organise110 the concerns of the intellect, and provide it with peace and quiet by waging a war against unreason, so that not only shall we hear about intellect and the intelligibles, but, so far as we have the capacity, we shall also enjoy the contemplation of intellect and be established with the incorporeal and, through the intellect, live with truth, not falsely with things of the same kind as bodies. (3) So we must strip off our many tunics, this visible and fleshly tunic and those which we wear inside, next to our tunics of skin. Let us go stripped, without tunics, to the stadium, to compete in the Olympics of the soul. Stripping off is the startingpoint, without which the contest will not happen.111 (4) And since some of our clothes are outside, some inside, the stripping-off of the first will involve things that are plain to see, of the second things that are less apparent. For instance, not eating, or not taking bribes, is obvious and public, but not even wanting to is less apparent. (5) So we should become detached from doing things, and then from the attraction to do them and from passion. For what is the use of detaching oneself from actions, but being riveted to the causes of the actions?112 32 Detachment can come about by force, or it can come about by persuasion and in accordance with reason, by a withering and (so to speak) oblivion and death of these causes. The best kind of detachment is the one which has no contact with that from which it has been torn away; in sensible things too, something which has been torn away by force retains a part or a trace of the tearing away. (2) [The best detachment] comes from consistently not doing. And this absence of doing is provided by abstinence – accompanied by constant thought about the intelligibles – from those perceptions which awake the passions, and that includes the perceptions arising from food.113 33 So we must abstain from some foods as much as from other things: from all foods which by their nature arouse the affective element of our soul.114 Let us consider it in this way too. (2) Here two springs well up to bind the soul:115 filled with them, as if with lethal potions, it falls into oblivion of its own objects of contemplation. These springs are pleasure and pain. (3) Perception provides them, and so does apprehension in accordance with perception, and the impressions and opinions and memories which accompany perceptions; the passions aroused by these, and unreason in its totality made gross by them, pull down the soul and divert it from its own love for that which is.116 (4) So we should be detached from them, as far as we can. Detachment comes by avoiding the passions that go with perception and those that go with unreason. (5) Perceptions come from things

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seen or heard or tasted or smelled or touched. Perception is like the mother-city of the alien colony of passions in ourselves. (6) See how much there is that inflames the passions that flows into us with each perception, perhaps from the sight of contests of horses and athletes or of dissolute dancing, perhaps from looking at the female; such sights are the bait for unreason, and bring it under their control with all kinds of additional snares.117 34 In all such cases [the soul], possessed like a Bacchant by unreason, makes people leap and shout and cry out, for external turmoil is inflamed by the internal turmoil which was set alight by perception.118 (2) The emotional movements which come through hearing, from some kinds of noises and sounds, or from obscenity and abuse, make many people behave as if stung by a gadfly, completely stripped of their reasoning power, whereas others become effeminate and writhe about in all kinds of attitudes.119 (3) Does anyone fail to see how the unreason of the soul is fattened by the use of incense, or by the sweet-smelling vapours that sell lovers their own desires?120 (4) What can we say of the passions which come through the sense of taste, when here especially twin chains are intertwined? One chain is that which the passions arising from taste make gross, the other is that which we make heavy and powerful by taking in foreign bodies.121 (5) Drugs, as some doctor said, include not only those prepared as medicine, but also food and drink which are taken as daily nourishment.122 A far more lethal effect is transmitted to the soul from these than from poisons which are made on purpose to destroy the body. (6) Touch almost makes the soul corporeal;123 often it goads the soul into uttering disjointed sounds, as if it were a body. (7) From these [perceptions] come memories and impressions and opinions all assembled: they arouse a swarm of passions, fears, desires, anger, love, seduction, grief, envy, anxiety, illness, and leave [the soul] full of such passions. 35 For that reason it is a great struggle to be purified of them, and a great effort to rid ourselves from practising them, when by night and day the inevitable involvement with perception is present to us. (2) So, as much as we can, we should detach ourselves from those places in which even an unwilling person can fall in with the crowd.124 And we should be wary of the battle fought from experience – even, let us say, of a victory – and of the lack of training which comes from inexperience.125 36 ‘Thus have we heard the deeds of former men’,126 of Pythagoreans and sages, some of whom lived in the most desert places, others in the temples and sacred groves of the cities, from which all disturbance had been excluded. Plato chose to live at the Academy, a place not just lonely and remote from the town, but, so they say, unhealthy.127 Others did not spare their eyes in their longing for the

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Book 1 inner contemplation which cannot be distracted.128 (2) If anyone thinks he can live among people, fill his senses with the passions that accord with them, and himself remain impassive, he is unaware that he deludes himself and those who believe him, and that he does not know much he is enslaved to the passions by his very lack of alienation from the crowd. He who spoke as follows129 did not speak empty words or tell lies about the nature of philosophers:

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(3) These people, from their youth, first of all do not know the way to the agora, nor where the lawcourt is, or the council house, or any other common meeting-place of the city; they neither see nor hear laws or decrees discussed or written. As for political clubs striving for power and meetings and dinners and riotous parties with flute-girls, they do not even dream of doing this. (4) Whether someone in the city is of good or bad family, or what bad trait they have inherited from their ancestors, men or women, he knows even less than (as the saying is) how many jugfuls there are in the sea. He does not even know that he does not know all these things, for it is not for the sake of reputation that he abstains from them; really it is only his body which remains and resides in the city, while his thought regards all this as little or nothing, despises it and soars in all directions, as Pindar says, not lowering itself to any of the things that are near.130 37 In these words Plato says that one remains impassive to these things not by descending to them, but by not lowering oneself to any of them. That is why [the philosopher] does not even know the road where the lawcourt or the council chamber is, or any other particular things. (2) It is not that he knows them, encounters them, and encountering them and filling his senses from them does not know that he knows them.131 On the contrary, Plato says that he abstains from them and does not know he is doing so: he does not even know that he does not know. (3) The philosopher does not even dream, he says, of stooping to dinner parties: so he will hardly mind being deprived of sauces and titbits of meat. Will he eat them at all? Will he not think them all little or nothing if one abstains, but big and harmful if one eats them? (4) ‘There are examples established in reality, the divine one most happy, the godless one most wretched’:132 will he not make himself like the first, unlike the second, living a life suited to that which he seeks to resemble, a simple, self-sufficient life, involved as little as possible with mortal things? 38 As long as foods make a difference to someone, and he advocates that ‘this too may be eaten’ but does not think that if it were possible one should abstain from all food, he will be seeking a reputation as

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advocate for the passions, because the question of foods makes no difference to him so long as foods do make a difference to him.133 (2) Now the philosopher will not take himself out by violence, for by doing violence to himself he remains none the less in the place from which he is forcing himself away.134 But he will not think he is doing something that makes no difference when it thickens his chain. So, giving to nature only what is necessary, and that light and provided by the lightest foods, he will refuse everything else as tending to pleasure. (3) He is convinced that perception, as it was said,135 is a rivet fixing soul to bodies, which by the very wound made by its own passion glues and rivets the soul to bodily enjoyment. (4) For if perceptions did not hamper the pure activity of the soul, what would be terrible about being in a body while remaining impassive to the movements of the body?136 39 But how could you judge or say what you have experienced, if you were not experiencing it and were not even present to what you experienced?137 (2) The intellect is with itself, even when we are not with it.138 But the person who has deviated from intellect is in the very place where he turned aside: he runs up and down attending to his apprehension of perception, and where the apprehension is, he is. (3) It is one thing not to attend to perceptibles because you are concerned with other matters, another for someone who stands aside139 to think he is not present. No one can show that Plato approves of this, unless he could show that Plato deluded himself. (4) Someone, then, who descends to acceptance of meat, who willingly witnesses the scenes that sight perceives and the intercourse and the laughter,140 by that very descent is present where passion also is. (5) But the man who is concerned with other things and stands aside – this is the man who by his inexperience ‘makes not just Thracian slave-girls, but the rest of the crowd, laugh’,141 who when he descends ‘falls into total helplessness’. This is not because of complete failure to perceive, nor yet because he has every detail correct but is active only with unreason.142 (6) Plato did not bring himself to say that, but rather ‘in quarrels he has no specific insult to throw at anyone, for he does not know anything bad about anyone, because he has not kept in practice. So in his helplessness he seems laughable; and when others are praised and exalted he is seen to laugh not in pretence but in reality, and he seems just crazy.’143 40 So it is from inexperience and from abstinence that he does not know; it is not that he descends to experience and, while active through unreason,144 is able to contemplate, uncontaminated, the concerns of intellect. (2) Not even those who say we have two souls [could say this], having given us two attentions, for in this way they would make two conjoined creatures, each capable, while both were

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Book 1 concerned with different things, of not taking over the other’s actions.145 41 Why should we make the passions wither and ourselves die to them, why should we practise this every day,146 if it were possible (as some have argued) for us to be active in accordance with intellect while we are involved in mortal concerns that are unsupervised by the intellect? ‘It is mind that sees and mind that hears.’147 (2) If you can be concerned with the immaterial while eating gourmet food and drinking vintage wine, why not when having intercourse with a mistress,148 doing things it is not decent even to name? (3) In all circumstances these passions belong to the child in us,149 and you will claim that, in so far as they are shameful, you are not dragged down to them. But what allocation decides that some passions cannot be experienced without one’s attending to them, but allows others to be fulfilled while one is attending to the intelligibles? (4) It is not that some are thought shameful by ordinary people and others not, for everything is shameful in comparison with life according to intellect, and we should abstain from everything just as from sex; though nature must be conceded some nourishment, because of the necessity of generation.150 (5) Where there is perception and apprehension of perception, there is detachment from the intelligible; and inasmuch as irrationality is aroused, to that extent there is detachment from intellection. It is not possible, when being carried hither and thither, to be there despite being here.151 We pay attention not with part of ourselves but with all of ourselves. 42 Many barbarians,152 too, have been overthrown by thinking that someone impassioned by sensation can be active about the intelligibles. These people have engaged in every variety of pleasure because they despise it, saying that it is possible to be concerned with other things and leave unreason to deal with these.153 I have already heard people being advocates for their own misfortune as follows:154 (2) ‘Foods do not defile us, any more than impurities from streams defile the sea. We rule over all foods, just as the sea rules over all fluids. If the sea were to close her mouth so as not to receive what flows in, she would become big in herself, but small in relation to the universe, because unable to absorb the impurities: wary of being defiled, she would not accept them. But it is for this reason that she accepts everything: she knows her own greatness, and does not turn away what comes to her. (3) So we’, they say, ‘if we were to be wary of food, would be enslaved to the thought of fear.155 But everything must be subordinate to us. If a small amount of water takes in something impure, it is quickly defiled and contaminated by the impurity; but the deep is not defiled. In the same way foods dominate lesser people, but where there is depth of freedom, people can accept everything and be defiled by nothing.’156 (4) With such arguments they delude them-

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selves, and their actions are consistent with what has deluded them: they leap into the depths not of liberty but of misery, and drown. (5) This has also made some of the Cynics into ‘doers of everything’157 because they have become attached to the cause of their errors – a cause which they are in the habit of calling ‘indifferent’. 43 But the person who is wary and suspicious of the spells cast by nature,158 who has investigated the nature of the body and has understood how it is attuned, like a musical instrument, to the capacities of the soul – he knows how ready passion is to sound, whether we want it to or not, when the body is struck by external things and the impact reaches our apprehension. For this apprehension is itself the resonance, but the soul cannot resonate unless all of it is turned to the sound and directing towards it the eye which is in charge.159 (2) Unreason is quite unable to judge how far, in what way, from where, to whom; it is essentially unanalytical, and where it has weight, it is like horses without a charioteer; so it is impossible to organise properly one’s relationship to external things, or to recognise the right time for food and the right amount, unless the eye of the charioteer is in charge, moderating movements and holding the reins of unreason, which is itself blind. (3) Someone who removes from unreason the control exercised by reasoning, and allows unreason to be carried along in accordance with its own nature, will be capable of letting appetite – and likewise assertiveness – advance with its own movement as far as it likes.160 A fine example of moral conduct he will offer us, and well reasoned his acts will be, if what he does with the activities of unreason goes unchecked by supervisory reason!161 44 Yet this, it seems, is where the moral and the immoral person differ: the former has reasoning in charge at all times, controlling unreason and handling its reins; the latter busies himself without concern for reasoning and for doing what he does with the help of reasoning. So the latter is said to be unreasoning and carried away by unreason, but the former is said to have used reason and to be in control of all that is unreasonable. (2) Most people are in error when dealing with appetite and anger, both in theory and in practice, but moral people get it right. This is why: most people leave the child to do what he wants by himself, but moral people leave it to the tutor and manage their concerns with his help.162 (3) So the same applies to food as to other activities and enjoyments of the body: when the charioteer is present he determines what is appropriate and timely. When he is absent, concerned (as some say) with his own affairs, either our attention is on him and he does not allow unreason to become impassioned or to be active in any way; or he has allowed our attention to stay with the child, without him, and has lost the person, who is dragged along by the folly of unreason.163 45 That is why abstinence, both from meat and from contact with

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Book 1 bodily pleasures and actions, is more appropriate for moral people, because when someone is in contact with bodily things, he must descend from appropriate behaviour to undertake the tutelage of the unreasoning in us. (2) This applies even more to foods, for unreason does not even reason out what effect they will have: unreason is by nature ignorant of that which is not present. (3) If it were possible to get rid of foods, as of sights, by removing them (for one can put to sleep the impressions of things seen and be concerned with other things)164 then it would be a manageable task to yield [only] a little to the needs of mortal nature and promptly get rid of them. (4) However, a lapse of time is needed for digestion and assimilation and for the co-operation of sleep and rest and other kinds of inactivity, and after this, when assimilation has taken place, a kind of blending and evacuation of residues.165 So the tutor must be there to select and commit to our nature light foods which do not impede him, and to foresee the future and how great the impediment would be if he allowed our appetites to impose on us a burden we cannot easily carry, for the sake of the brief pleasure they receive when taking in food to be swallowed. 46 Reason, then, will quite properly reject abundant or excessive food, and will restrict what is necessary to a small amount, if the intention is166 neither, when making provision, to have problems because more is needed; nor, when preparing the meal, to need more servants; nor, when eating it, to reach out for more pleasures; nor, when getting full, to be filled with inertia; nor, when filled up with this heavy load, to become sleepy; nor, when full of the foods which fatten the body, to make one’s chains stronger and oneself more inert and feebler about one’s own concerns. (2) Find me someone who is eager to live, so far as is possible, in accordance with intellect and to be undistracted by the passions which affect the body, and let him demonstrate that meat-eating is easier to provide than dishes of fruits and vegetables; that meat is cheaper to prepare than inanimate food for which chefs are not needed at all;167 that, compared with inanimate food, it is intrinsically pleasure-free and lighter on the digestion, and more quickly assimilated by the body than vegetables; that it is less provocative of desires and less conducive to obesity and robustness than a diet of inanimate food. 47 But if no doctor, no philosopher, no trainer, no layman ventures to say this, why do we not voluntarily detach ourselves from this bodily burden? Why do we not liberate ourselves, by this detachment, from many constraints? (2) A person who has accustomed himself to being satisfied with the minimum has got rid not just of one thing, but of thousands: excess of riches, the service of too many slaves, a mass of belongings, a condition of somnolence, intensity and frequency of illness, need for doctors, provocation of sexual desire,

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thicker exhalations, much residue, heavy chains, robustness which prompts action, an Iliad of evils.168 An inanimate, simple diet, available to all, takes these away from us, offering peace for the reasoning power which provides us with security. (3) As Diogenes said, thieves and fighters do not come from eaters of barley-bread;169 but informers and tyrants come from meat-eaters. (4) Once the cause of needing many things has been removed, the excess of things brought into the body eliminated, and the weight of assimilated things lightened, the eye becomes free, anchored outside the ‘smoke and swell’ of the body.170 48 This needs neither records nor proofs, because it is obviously self-evident. So it is not only those who strive to live in accordance with intellect, and have established such a life as their end, who see that abstinence from such foods is necessary for the end: I think almost every philosopher who puts frugality above extravagance would prefer the person content with little to the person who requires more. (2) And, though it may seem paradoxical to many, we find, among those declaring and valuing this principle, even people who think that the end of those who have chosen philosophy is achieved through pleasure.171 (3) For most of the Epicureans, starting with their leader, appear to be satisfied with barley-bread and fruit, and they have filled treatises with arguments that nature needs little and that its requirements are adequately met by simple, available food.172 49 Riches in accordance with nature, they say, are limited and easy to get: riches in accordance with empty beliefs are unlimited and hard to get.173 (2) Disturbance caused to the flesh by want is well and sufficiently removed by things which are easy to get, which have the simple nature of fluid and dry. (3) But otherwise, insofar as one has fallen into extravagance, they say that one has a desire that is not necessary and does not arise by necessity from something that causes pain, but from something which causes distress or discomfort only by being absent, or else from delight, or wholly from empty and misleading beliefs; and such a desire does not refer back to any natural lack or to something which by its absence disintegrates the compound.174 (4) Ordinary foods suffice to provide what nature necessarily requires, and because they are simple and small in quantity, they are easy to get. A meat-eater needs inanimate foods as well, but someone satisfied with inanimate food needs half as much, and that easy to get and needing small expense to prepare.175 50 What one must do, the Epicureans say, is not to get together the necessities of life and add philosophy as an extra, but to provide for genuine assurance of soul and then deal with daily needs. We entrust our concerns to a bad manager if we assess and provide what nature needs without using philosophy.176 (2) So when doing philosophy one must take thought for these things too, insofar as that school’s

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Book 1 attentive concern allows; and when something is removed by that school because it will not authorise complete assurance, it should not be added to the provision of wealth and foods.177 (3) Philosophy, then, should be used to handle such matters, and it will immediately turn out that pursuing a minimal, simple and light diet is far better; for least disturbance comes from least. 51 Preparing food brings many obstructions in its train, from the weighing down of the body, from the trouble of preparation, from disrupting the sustained activity of reason about the most important principles, or from some other cause. So preparation immediately becomes unprofitable, and cannot compensate for the disturbances it entails.178 (2) Instead, the hope of lacking nothing must be with the philosopher throughout his life. Things which are easy to get safeguard this hope sufficiently, expensive things make it a vain hope. That is why most people, even though they have many possessions, make endless efforts because they think they will go short. (3) We are satisfied with available, simple things if we keep in mind that all the wealth in the world is not strong enough to give the soul a worthy release from disturbance, but the trouble of the flesh is removed by very moderate, ordinary things which are very easy to get. And if even things on this scale fall short, that does not disturb the person who practises dying.179 (4) Moreover, pain caused by lack is much milder than pain caused by repletion, unless someone deludes himself with empty beliefs.180 (5) Diversity of foods not only fails to relieve the troubles of the soul, it will not even enhance pleasure in the flesh. For pleasure has limits, which coincide with the elimination of pain.181 (6) Thus flesh-eating does not remove any trouble of our nature, or any want which, if not satisfied, leads to pain. The gratification it provides is violent, and is quickly mixed with its opposite. For it contributes not to the maintenance of life but to the variation of pleasures: it resembles sex or drinking imported wines, and our nature can survive without these.182 (7) The things without which nature could not survive are small in every way and can be got easily, with justice and liberal-mindedness, tranquillity and the utmost ease. 52 Meat does not conduce to health either, but rather impedes it. Health is maintained by the same things through which it is acquired; and it is acquired by a very light and fleshless diet, so that must be how it is sustained.183 (2) If inanimate foods do not enhance the might of Milo,184 neither do they in general increase physical strength. But the philosopher does not need either might or increased physical strength, if he is to apply himself to contemplation, not to action and to riotous living. (3) It is not surprising that ordinary people think meat-eating contributes to health, for they are just the people who think that enjoyment and sex preserve health, whereas these things have never profited anyone, and one must be content if they have

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done no harm.185 (4) If there are many people who are not like that,186 it need not concern us, for among ordinary people there is nothing reliable and consistent even in friendship and goodwill. They have no capacity for such things, or for wisdom, or even for bits of wisdom which have some worth: the ordinary person does not understand what is advantageous either to the individual or to the community, and cannot discriminate between low and civilised behaviour. Besides, there is much hooliganism and lack of control among ordinary people. So we should not fear that one day there will be no one left to eat animals. 53 If everyone thought aright, there would be no need for birdcatchers and fowlers, fishermen and pig-farmers. When animals manage themselves, and have no one to care for them and take charge of them, they are quickly exterminated by those that attack and consume most of them. This happens to thousands of animals that humans do not eat (but if complex and varied folly persists among humans, there will be thousands of humans to devour them too).187 (2) One must safeguard health, not from fear of death, but so as not to be impeded in pursuit of the goods which come from contemplation. Health is best safeguarded by the undisturbed condition of the soul and the maintenance of thought directed to that which really is. (3) This has considerable effect even on the body, as friends of ours have shown by experience. They had such severe arthritis in hands and feet that for eight whole years they had to be carried about, and they shook it off at the time when they quit their possessions and looked to the divine.188 Bodily illness was dismissed together with possessions and worries; so we can see that a certain condition of the soul has a great effect on the body, with regard to health and to everything else. (4) In most cases, reduction of food also contributes to health. Epicurus rightly said that we should beware of food which we want to enjoy and which we pursue, but find disagreeable once we get it.189 All rich, heavy food is like this. And when people are carried away190 by wanting it, they land in expense, illness, satiety or preoccupation. 54 For this reason we should guard against a surfeit even of simple things, and in all cases we must examine what happens as a result of enjoyment or possession, how big a thing it is, and whether it relieves any trouble of flesh or soul. Otherwise in every case tension, such as life engenders, will arise from gratification.191 (2) We must not go beyond the bounds, but keep within the boundary and measure that applies to such things,192 and must reckon that the person who is afraid of abstinence from animate creatures, even if it is for pleasure that he takes to meat-eating, is afraid of death. For he immediately connects with deprivation of meat the presence of some terror without limit, and from this presence comes death. (3) From causes like these, and from analogous causes, there arises an insa-

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Book 1 tiable desire for life, wealth, money and fame, because people think that with these they will, given a longer time, increase their sum of good, and because they fear the terror of death as something without limit.193 (4) The pleasure experienced from luxury comes nowhere near the pleasure experienced from self-sufficiency; it is very pleasant to think just how little one needs. Take away luxury, take away sexual excitement and the wish for external recognition, and what further need is there for inert wealth, which is useful to us for nothing but only weighs us down? This is the way to be filled full, and the pleasure from this kind of satiety is unmixed. (5) We must also make the body unaccustomed, so far as is possible, to pleasure from satiety, but accustomed to the repletion which comes from satisfying hunger; we must eat in order to194 get through everything, and must take as our limit not the unlimited, but the necessary. (6) Thus it195 too, by self-sufficiency and assimilation to the divine, can obtain the good that is possible for it. Thus it too will not hanker for more, or for time, as if time would add more good to it. Thus it will be genuinely rich, measuring its wealth by the natural limit, not by empty beliefs. Thus it will not be suspended on hopes of the greatest pleasure, without being sure of getting it; for that pleasure causes maximum disruption. But it will be self-sufficient in what is present and in what has already happened, and will not be tormented by the thought of not remaining for longer.196 55 Besides, heaven knows it is absurd that someone who is in distress, or serious external difficulties, or a captive in chains, has no thought of food and does not worry about where to get it, but even refuses the food he needs when it is set before him; whereas the one who is really a prisoner, racked by his inner distress, looks for ways to prepare dishes and worries about refinements which will make his chains the heavier. (2) How could this be the behaviour of men who know what has happened to them, and not of those who enjoy what has happened to them and do not know their situation? The experience of these people is the converse of that of prisoners who do know their own misfortune. (3) Dissatisfied with the life they have, and full of unfathomable disturbance, they yearn to be filled with what is absent. No one comes to want silver tables and couches, perfumes and cooks and furniture and clothes and dinners which achieve the full range of refinement and luxury known to man, because everything that disturbs him is easily resolved: he does so because of failure to make use of the life he has, because of unrestricted increase of goods, and because of unfathomable disturbance. (4) Consequently, the first group do not remember because they are resisting what is present, the second group seek what is absent because they are displeased with what is present.197

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56 The contemplative holds to simplicity of lifestyle in both ways, for he knows the chains that hold him: he is incapable of reaching out for luxury, and he is content with simple things, so he will not seek to feed on animate creatures as if inanimate foods were not enough for him. (2) Even if the nature of the body were not like this in the case of the philosopher, not as easy to lead and easy to care for with ordinary things, but we had to endure pain for the sake of true security, would we not endure it? (3) When we must get rid of an illness,198 do we not eagerly endure everything? We are cut, made to bleed, burned; we drink bitter potions; we are purged through the stomach, by emetics, through the nostrils; and we pay fees to the people who do this to us. And would it not be reasonable for us to endure everything on account of our inner illness, even if endurance was painful, as if we were competing for the prize of immortality and union with god from which union with the body holds us back? (4) In any case, we do not put up with following the laws of the body, which are violent, and opposed to the laws and the ways of the intellect, which save us. And as we are now philosophising not about the endurance of pains, but about the rejection of unnecessary pleasures, what defence remains for those who want shamelessly to maintain their own lack of control? 57 If we are to speak frankly, concealing nothing, there is no other way to achieve our end than by being riveted (so to speak) to the god, and unfastening the rivet of the body and the pleasurable emotions of the soul which come from the body; security comes to us by actions, not just by listening to lectures.199 (2) It is not possible to be familiar with a god – not even with one of the particular gods, let alone the god who singly is above all and higher than incorporeal nature – by following just any lifestyle, especially flesh-eating; one can hardly, even with all kinds of purifications of soul and body, become worthy of awareness of the god, that is if one has a fine nature and lives a pure and holy life.200 (3) So, inasmuch as the father of all is simpler and purer and more self-sufficient, being established far from the impact made by matter, the one who approaches him should be pure and holy in all respects, beginning with the body and culminating in the inner man, assigning to each of his parts, or altogether to what is his, the holiness that is natural to each.201 (4) But perhaps no one would argue with this, but people might still be puzzled why we count abstinence as holiness, although we slaughter sheep and cattle in sacrifice202 and reckon this rite to be holy and pleasing to the gods. So, because the resolution of these questions requires a long discussion, the matter of sacrifices requires a fresh start.

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Book 2 BOOK 2 1 Continuing with our investigation into simplicity and holiness, Castricius, we come now to the issue of sacrifices. It is a difficult question, and requires extensive discussion if we are to settle it both truthfully and so as to please the gods. That is why I deferred the subject for its own consideration, and shall now state my own view and what can be expounded, having first examined something which is overlooked in relation to my original subject.203 2 First, then, I say that it does not follow from killing animals that one must necessarily also eat them: by conceding one of the two, I mean slaughter, one does not thereby postulate eating. For instance, the laws allow defence against enemies who attack, but eating them is held to be beyond the bounds of humanity. (2) Second, even if it is proper to sacrifice some animate creature to daimones or to gods or to certain powers, for reasons which are known or even unknown to people, it is not therefore necessary to feast on animals. It will be shown that people include in sacrifices animals that even those accustomed to flesh-eating could not bear to taste.204 (3) Moreover, the same fallacy goes unobserved in relation to killing animals. It does not follow that if we must kill some, we must kill all, just as it does not follow that if we kill irrational animals, we must therefore kill people.205 3 Abstinence from animate creatures, as I also said in my first book, is not advised for everyone without exception, but for philosophers, and among philosophers chiefly for those who make their happiness depend on God and the imitation of God.206 (2) Even in civic life, lawgivers have established different requirements for laypeople and for priests; in some matters they have made concessions to ordinary people in relation to food and to lifestyle generally, but have forbidden priests to do the same, imposing death or other heavy penalties.207 4 If these points are not confused, but are distinguished as they should be, most of the opposing arguments will be found invalid. For most of them either declare that killing is necessary because of the damage done by animals, and assume it follows that eating is also necessary; or else, because animals are used in sacrifice, it is deduced that people should also eat them. (2) Again, if some animal must be destroyed because of its savagery, they think it follows that domesticated animals should also be killed. (3) Also that if some people need to eat meat, such as athletes and soldiers and people who work with their bodies, so should philosophers, and if some philosophers, then all: but all these inferences are vitiated, and cannot establish their thesis as necessary. (4) That they are all vitiated is obvious at once to anyone who is not disputatious. I have already examined some,

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and shall refute others as the argument advances. Now I shall elucidate the question of sacrifices, expounding their origins, what the first sacrifices were and what they were like, how and when they changed, whether the philosopher should offer everything in sacrifice and to whom animal sacrifices are made. I shall write about the topic as a whole, using material I have myself researched and material I have taken from the ancients,208 aiming, so far as possible, at proportion and appropriateness to my subject. This is how it is. 5 It seems an incalculable time since the most learned of all peoples (as Theophrastus says),209 living in the most holy of lands which was founded by the Nile, began with Hestia to sacrifice firstfruits to the gods of heaven.210 They were not of myrrh or of cassia and frankincense mixed with saffron. These came into use many generations later; people, wandering in search of what they needed to live, with great efforts and tears offered drops of these as first-fruits to the gods.211 (2) So it was not these that they used for sacrifice earlier, but greenstuff, as if they were gathering in their hands the downy bloom of fertile nature.212 The earth produced trees before animals, and grasses, that germinate annually, long before trees;213 so they picked leaves and roots and whole growths of these and burned them, and greeted the visible gods of the heavens by this sacrifice, immortalising by fire the honours offered to them. It is for them that we preserve an undying fire in the temples, this being the thing most like them.214 (3) From thumiasis, the rising of smoke from the produce of earth, they gave the names thumiatêria, altars for burning incense, and thuein, to sacrifice, and thusia, a sacrifice. We do not hear these aright when, thinking they refer to the later error, we call thusia the supposed worship which uses animals. (4) The ancients were so concerned not to transgress custom that they called arômata the offerings which are now burned, to show that they would curse [arasthai] those who neglected the ancient practice and imported another.215 (5) You can see the antiquity of these burnt offerings by considering that many people even now sacrifice chips of sweet-smelling woods. (6) After the original green crops the earth produced trees, and people ate the fruit, first of the oak-tree. Because of scarcity, they burned only a little of their food, but more of the leaves as sacrifices for the gods. After that life changed to cultivated foods and sacrifices of crops, and it was said ‘enough of the oak’.216 6 The first of Demeter’s crops to appear, after legumes, was barley, so these were the grains which people scattered from the beginning at the first sacrifices.217 (2) Later, when people had pounded them and ground218 their food, they concealed, as a mystery, the tools for this work which gave divine assistance to their lives, and approached them as sacred;219 and because the life of ground grain was thought blessed in comparison with what went before, they also offered some

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Book 2 ground grain to the gods, throwing it first into the fire. That is why even now, in addition to the sacrifice of parts of the victim, we make offerings of ground grain, testifying by what is done to the increase of offerings since the beginning, but not realising for what reason we do each of these things.220 (3) That was our starting-point; then, as crops, especially wheat, became more abundant, first-fruits of cakes and all the rest, offered to the gods, were added to the sacrifices.221 (4) They picked many kinds of flowers, and they also combined whatever they had then that was fine and fitted by its fragrance for the divine sense. The flowers they wove into garlands, the fragrances they burned as a gift, and when they discovered for their use other divine liquids, wine and honey and olive oil, they made offerings of these also to the gods responsible for them. 7 The Athenian procession in honour of the Sun and the Seasons, which is still performed, appears to bear witness to these things.222 Carried in the procession are mud, grass, couch grass laid on fruitstones, olive-branches, dried pulses, acorns, arbutus, barley, wheat, dried figs, a bannock made of wheat-flour and barley-flour, a raised loaf and a cooking pot.223 (2) But when the first-fruits offered by people in sacrifice went further in unlawfulness, the use of the most terrible sacrifices was introduced, full of savagery, so that the curses once pronounced against us seemed now to have reached their fulfilment: people slaughtered, and stained the altars with blood, from the time when, having experienced famine and war, they had blood on their hands.224 (3) So the divine power (as Theophrastus says),225 in retaliation for both of these, imposed upon us, it seems, a fitting penalty. Accordingly, some people have become atheists;226 others, strictly speaking, are mind-forsaken rather than godforsaken, because they think the gods are base, no better than us in nature. So the first, apparently, became non-sacrificers, offering the gods no first-fruit of what they had; and the second became bad sacrificers and partook227 of unlawful offerings. 8 For this reason the Thoans, who lived on the borders of Thrace, offering first-fruits of nothing and making no sacrifices, were at that time wiped out from the human race: all of a sudden no one could find the inhabitants or the city or the foundations of the houses, (2) for they would not restrain their mad arrogance; they were not prepared to worship the gods, nor to sacrifice on the holy altars of the Blessed as it is right for the immortals. That is why Zeus son of Kronos in anger buried them because they gave no honours to the Blessed228

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nor did they give them first-fruits, as justice required. (3) Then there were the Bassarai long ago, who not only emulated the sacrifices of the Tauroi but, in the bacchic madness of their human sacrifices, added eating to them – just as we do now with animals, for having made an offering we use the rest for dinner. Who has not heard that in their madness they fell upon and bit each other, and did not stop feasting for real on blood until they had wiped out the family which had been first among them to partake of such sacrifice?229 9 The sacrifice of animals, then, is later than other forms, indeed the most recent, and its cause is not a benefit, as for the sacrifice of crops, but a problem arising from famine or some other misfortune. For instance, in the particular case of Athens, most killings have their origin in ignorance, anger or fear. (2) They ascribe the slaughter of pigs to the unintentional error of Klymene, who did not aim deliberately, but killed the animal. So her husband felt religious concern for her, thinking she had broken the law, and went to Pytho to consult the oracle of the god. The god accepted what had happened, and from then on the event was held to be a matter of indifference.230 (3) And when Episkopos, a descendant of the Theopropoi, wanted to offer sheep, they say that the oracle allowed it, but with great caution. It goes like this: It is not right for you to kill the sturdy race of sheep, descendant of the Theopropoi. But the animal that of its own will nods assent over the holy water, that one, Episkopos, I say you may justly sacrifice.231

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10 They first killed a goat at Ikarios in Attica, because it had nibbled a vine.232 (2) Diomos was the first to slaughter an ox: he was priest of Zeus Polieus, and when the Diipoleia were being celebrated and the produce was being prepared according to ancient custom, the ox came forward and ate the sacred cake. Diomos killed it, taking as his helpers all the others who were present.233 (3) These are the particular reasons which are given at Athens; other people give others, but all the reasons are full of unholy explanations.234 Most people blame famine and the injustice which results from it. That is why, having eaten animate creatures, they made offerings of them too, being accustomed to make offerings of their food. (4) So even if use in sacrifice had preceded use as necessary food, it would not determine what people should eat; but since their offering was a consequence of what they had eaten, it could not require them to eat, as a pious act, what they had impiously offered the gods. 11 One of the most important indications that all such things originate from injustice is that the same creatures are not sacrificed or eaten by all peoples, but each judges proper conduct in terms of its

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Book 2 own need.235 (2) Thus the Egyptians and Phoenicians would sooner eat human flesh than cow’s flesh. The reason is that this animal is useful, but was growing scarce in their countries. So they both ate and sacrificed bulls, but spared the females for purposes of reproduction, and made a law that it was an abomination236 to partake of them. It was by their need that they distinguished piety from impiety in relation to one and the same species: cattle. (3) Given these facts, Theophrastus was right to forbid the sacrifice of animate creatures by those who wanted to be truly pious; he also gave other reasons, of the following sort.237 12 First, people sacrificed animals because a major necessity (as we said) had us in its grip: famine and war were to blame, and also imposed the necessity of eating animals. So while there are crops, what need is there to make the sacrifice imposed by necessity? (2) Next, return and thanks for benefactions should vary according to the worth of the benefit: those who have done most for us must be given the greatest reward, and from that which is most valuable, especially if they have themselves provided it. Now the best and most valuable benefits the gods have given us are the crops, for with them they preserve us and provide for us to live an orderly life; so we must honour them with crops. (3) Moreover, we ought to make only those sacrifices by which we hurt no one, for sacrifice, more than anything else, must be harmless to everyone. If someone says that God gave us animals, no less than crops, for our use, the answer is that when animals are sacrificed some harm is done to them, in that they are deprived of soul.238 So they should not be sacrificed. (4) For sacrifice, as its name suggests, is something holy,239 but no one is holy if he returns favours out of other people’s possessions without their consent, not even if he takes crops or plants. How could it be holy, when injustice is done to those who are robbed? But if a man who takes even crops from others cannot sacrifice them in holiness, it is certainly not holy to sacrifice by taking something more valuable, for that makes the wrongdoing greater. Now soul is much more valuable than that which grows from the earth, so it is not fitting to take it away by sacrificing animals. 13 But perhaps someone might say that we take something even from plants. It is not the same kind of taking, for it is not from the unwilling. If we let them be, they themselves let fall their fruits, and the taking of fruit does not entail the destruction of plants as when animals lose their souls. (2) As for taking what bees produce, it comes from our efforts, so it is proper that the profit should also be shared: the bees collect honey from plants, but we look after the bees. So we must share it out in such a way that they suffer no harm, and what they cannot use, but we can, is in a way their payment to us.240 (3) We should, then, abstain from animals in sacrifice. Everything, indeed,

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belongs to the gods, but crops are thought to be ours, for we sow them and plant them and nurture them with other kinds of care. So we should sacrifice from what is ours, not from what belongs to others. (4) And things which are inexpensive and easy to get are more holy and pleasing to the gods than things which are difficult to get, and that which is easiest for the sacrificers is at hand to show constant piety. But something which is neither holy nor inexpensive should not be sacrificed at all, even if it is there. 14 To show that animals are not among the things which are easy to get and inexpensive, we must take the generality of our race into consideration. Some people are ‘rich in lambs’ and ‘rich in cattle’,241 but this should not be our focus. First, many peoples do not possess any sacrificial animals, unless you count those which are unworthy; and second, most people who live in cities do not have animals. (2) And if someone argues that they do not have cultivated crops either, this does not apply to other produce of the earth, and it is not so difficult to get produce as it is to get animals.242 (3) And inexpensive things which are easy to get contribute to consistent piety, and to the piety of everyone. 15 Experience testifies that the gods take more pleasure in this than in great expense. Otherwise, the Pythia would not have said that the god was better pleased with the man from Hermione, who sacrificed three finger-breadths of ground grain from his pouch, than with the Thessalian who brought cattle with gilded horns and hecatombs to Apollo Pythios.243 (2) And when the man from Hermione, because of this response, threw all that was left in his pouch on the altar-fire, she said that by doing so he had become twice as detestable as he had been pleasing. (3) Thus inexpensive things are dear to the gods, and divinity considers rather the quality of the sacrificers than the quantity of the sacrifice.244 16 Theopompus245 told a similar story, that a man from Magnesia in Asia came to Delphi: he was very rich and owned many cattle. It was his custom to make, every year, many splendid sacrifices to the gods, both because of his abundance of resources, and because of piety and wanting to please the gods. (2) This being his attitude to the divine power, he came to Delphi, and having brought a hecatomb to the god and honoured Apollo splendidly, he went to the shrine to consult the oracle. Thinking that he worshipped the gods better than anyone, he asked the Pythia to declare who honoured the divine power best and most zealously and who made the most acceptable sacrifices, expecting that the first place would be given to him. But the priestess replied that the man who best worshipped the gods was Klearchos, who lived in Methydrion in Arcadia. (3) The Magnesian was astounded, and wanted to see this man and to find out from him how he offered sacrifices. He soon reached Methydrion, and at first

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Book 2 despised it because the place was small and humble in size, reckoning that even the community itself, let alone one of its private citizens, could not honour the gods better or more splendidly than he could. Nevertheless he met the man and asked him to explain in what way he honoured the gods. (4) Klearchos said that he made offerings and sacrificed with care at the proper times: every month at the new moon he garlanded and polished Hermes and Hekate and the other sacred objects that his ancestors had left, and honoured them with incense and ground grain and cakes.246 (5) Every year he took part in the public sacrifices, omitting no festival, and in those sacrifices he worshipped the gods not by sacrificing cattle or cutting up victims, but by offering what he had available. He was, however, careful to assign to the gods first-fruits of every crop that grew and of fruits of the earth in their season, giving some as offerings and consecrating some; but he kept to his self-sufficiency and did not sacrifice cattle. 17 Some historians say that the tyrants, after their victory over the Carthaginians, offered hecatombs to Apollo with great rivalry among themselves for the most splendid.247 Then they asked which had best pleased the god, and his reply was wholly unexpected: that it was the ground grain from Dokimos. (2) This was a Delphian who farmed a hard, stony patch of ground. He came down from his piece of land that day and offered a few handfuls of barley-groats from the pouch he wore, giving the god more satisfaction than those who had offered splendid sacrifices. (3) Some of the poets say much the same, because the point is well known; for instance, Antiphanes in The Female Initiate:248

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The gods delight in thrifty offerings. Here is the proof: when people sacrifice In hekatombs, and then to all of these The frankincense is added last of all, the rest Is vain expense, a loss to those who paid. This little thing is pleasing to the gods. (4) And Menander says in The Misanthrope249 Frankincense is pious, And so are cakes: when these are placed upon The fire, the god takes all. 18 That is why people used containers of pottery and wood and wickerwork, especially for public festivals, believing that the divine power is pleased by them. And the oldest images of the gods, made of pottery and wood, are reckoned the more divine because of their material and the naivety of the workmanship. (2) At least, they say

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Translation that Aeschylus, when the Delphians asked him to write a paian to the god, said that it had been done best by Tynnichos,250 and if they set his own beside that of Tynnichos it would be like putting new cult-statues beside old; for the old ones, though naively made, were reckoned divine, whereas the new ones, though most skilfully made, provoked admiration but had a lesser sense of the divine. (3) So Hesiod was right to say in praise of the rule of ancient sacrifices: For sacrifice from the city, the ancient law is the best.251 19 Those who have written about ceremonies and sacrifices advise keeping exact rules about cakes, on the grounds that this is more pleasing to the gods than the sacrifice of animals.252 (2) And Sophocles, describing the sacrifice that is dear to the gods, says in the Polueidos:253

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There was sheep’s wool, and from the vine Libations, and the grape well-stored, Fruits of all kinds mingled with barley-grains, Richness of oil, and, most elaborate, The work in wax of tawny bees. (3) Venerable too were the reminders of former times in Delos, from the Hyperboreans who brought sheaves.254 (4) So we must purify our character and then go to sacrifice, bringing the gods the sacrifices which are dear to them, but not expensive. As it is, people think that putting clean clothes on an impure body is not enough for purity at sacrifices, but they think it makes no difference if some people go to sacrifices clean in body and clothing, but with their soul not pure from evil – as if the god did not take particular delight in the most divine part of us when it is in a state of purity, for it is naturally akin to the god.255 (5) There was an inscription at Epidauros: Pure must one be to enter the incense-fragrant temple, And purity is thinking holy thoughts.256

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20 That the god is pleased not by the size of sacrifices, but by ordinary things, is clear from the fact that whatever is served as our daily food, everyone, before enjoying it, makes an offering from it. This offering is small, but the small offering carries greater honour than anything else. (2) Theophrastus uses examples from many ancestral customs of different peoples to show that the ancient form of sacrifice was of crops; he says too that even earlier grass was collected. He also explains libations, as follows. (3) For most people, ancient rites were sober: libations of water are sober, and so are the

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Book 2 libations of honey which came after them (for this was the first liquid crop we had to hand, taken from the bees). Then there were libations of oil, and finally, last of all, came libations of wine.257 21 Evidence for this comes not only from the kurbeis, which are really a kind of transcription of the Corybantic rites from Crete,258 but also in Empedocles,259 who comments on sacrifices in expounding his theogony: (2) No Ares was to them a god, no Battle-noise, No Zeus was king, no Kronos, no Poseidon: Kypris was queen – that is, friendship. (3) They made her kind with pious images, With pictured creatures and with subtle scents, With sacrifice of purest myrrh, of frankincense Sweet-scented; and they poured upon the ground Libations from the tawny bees.

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(4) These practices are still preserved among some peoples, like traces of the truth: the altar was not soaked by violent deaths of bulls. 22 I think that when friendship and perception of kinship ruled everything, no one killed any creature, because people thought the other animals were related to them.260 But when Ares and Battlenoise and all kinds of conflict and source of war were in control, then for the first time no one spared any related creature at all. (2) This too should be considered. We have a relationship with other human beings, but we think it right to exterminate or to punish all evil-doers who are carried as if by an air-current of their individual nature and depravity to harm those they encounter.261 Perhaps, then, it is also right to exterminate those of the irrational animals that are unjust by nature and evil-doers and impelled by their nature to harm those who come near them; but it must be unjust to exterminate and to kill those of the other animals that do nothing unjust and are not impelled by their nature to do harm, as it is unjust to kill people like that.262 (3) This appears to show that we have no relation of justice with other animals, because some are harmful and evil-doers by nature; but, as with people, others are not like that.263 23 Should we, then, sacrifice to the gods those creatures which deserve to be slaughtered? How could we, if they are bad by nature?

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It is no different from saying that defective animals should be sacrificed. We shall be offering first-fruits of evils, not sacrifices to honour the gods. So if animals should be sacrificed to the gods, we should sacrifice those animals which do us no wrong. (2) But we agreed that those of the other animals which do us no wrong should not be killed, so they too should not be sacrificed to the gods. If, then, neither these nor the evil-doers should be sacrificed, is it not obvious that we should in all cases abstain, and that none of the other animals should be sacrificed? Nevertheless, it is proper to kill one of these two kinds.264 24 There are, moreover, three reasons altogether for sacrificing to the gods: to honour them, to give thanks, or from need of good things. As [we behave] to good men, so too we think we ought to offer the gods first-fruits. We honour the gods because we want evil to be averted from us and goods to be provided for us, or because we have had benefits from them,265 or simply to honour their condition of goodness. So also in the case of animals, if they should be offered to the gods, they should be sacrificed for one of these reasons; for what we do sacrifice, we sacrifice for one of these reasons. (2) Now would one of us, or would a god, think he was receiving honour when the offering instantly shows us to be unjust, or would he rather think that doing such a thing is dishonour? For we acknowledge that we will do wrong266 in killing for sacrifice an animal that has done us no wrong, so we should not sacrifice any of the other animals in order to confer honour. (3) Nor should we do so to return thanks for benefactions, for one who is giving back a just reward for a benefaction, and fair recompense for a good deed, ought not to provide them by treating someone badly. He will no more seem to be making recompense than someone who robs his neighbour to crown others as a return of thanks and honour. (4) We should not even sacrifice because we need some good. Someone who seeks by unjust action to be treated well falls under suspicion that he will not be grateful even when he is treated well. So animals should not be sacrificed to the gods even in the hope of benefaction. (5) It might be possible to hide from a human being that you are doing this, but it is impossible to hide anything from the gods. So if sacrifice should be for one of these reasons, but this [animal sacrifice] should not be done for any of them, it is clear that animals should not be sacrificed.267 25 We try to conceal the truth about sacrifices by the enjoyment that arises from them: we hide it from ourselves, but we cannot hide it from the god. (2) We do not sacrifice to the gods any valueless animals, or animals that are no use for our lives, or any of those which provide no enjoyment. Who has ever sacrificed snakes or scorpions or monkeys or any other such creature? (3) But we do not abstain from any of the creatures which are of some use to us or have in them some source of enjoyment: we slaughter them in earnest and flay them as

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Book 2 a show of honour to the divine. (4) We slaughter for the gods cattle and sheep, and in addition deer and birds, and even hogs, which have nothing at all in common with purity but do provide enjoyment for us.268 Some of these help our lives by labouring with us, others are useful in providing food or meeting other needs. (5) Those that do none of these things are still killed by people in sacrifices, just like those that are useful, because of the enjoyment that comes from them. (6) But we do not sacrifice donkeys or elephants or others of the animals that labour with us, but provide no enjoyment. (7) From those that do, we do not abstain: quite apart from sacrifice, we slaughter them for our enjoyment, and from the sacrificial animals we sacrifice not those that gratify the gods, but much more those that gratify the desires of human beings. Thus we testify against ourselves that it is for enjoyment that we persist with such sacrifices. 26 The Jews of Syria, because of their original sacrifice, still (so Theophrastus says) sacrifice animals, but if someone told us to sacrifice in the same way, we should desist from doing so.269 (2) For they do not feast on the sacrificed animals, but burn them in their entirety, at night, pouring over them much honey and wine; they used up the sacrifice quickly, so that not even the All-Seeing should be a spectator of this terrible act. (3) They fast on the days between sacrifices, and throughout this time – being a race of philosophers – they talk to each other about the divine, and at night they contemplate the stars, gazing at them and calling on God in their prayers.270 (4) They were the first to make sacrifice of other animals and even from among themselves, doing so from necessity, not from appetite. (5) But one could learn from studying the Egyptians, most learned of all men, who were so far from killing any other animal that they made likenesses of them as images of the gods. That is how closely related and akin they thought animals are to the gods, and to humans.271 27 Originally, then, sacrifices to the gods were made with crops. In time we came to neglect holiness, and when crops were lacking and through the dearth of lawful food people took to eating each other’s flesh, then, imploring the divine power with many prayers, they first offered the gods sacrifice from among themselves, not only consecrating to the gods whatever was finest among them, but taking in addition others of the race who were not among the best.272 (2) From then until now, it is not only in Arcadia at the Lykaia and in Carthage for Kronos that everyone engages in public human sacrifice, but periodically, in remembrance of the custom, they stain altars with the blood of their own kind, even though holiness, among them, excludes from the rites by lustral water and by proclamation anyone responsible for the blood of a friend.273 (3) Thereafter they moved on to substitute the bodies of other animals for their own bodies in sacrifice. (4) Conversely, it was through satiety of lawful food that

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they moved towards forgetfulness of piety, and as they reached insatiability they left nothing untasted or uneaten. (5) (This happens now, everywhere, even in relation to crops. When people relieve their need for necessities by eating, they seek to exceed satiety, and they work away at preparing for their food much that goes beyond temperance.)274 (6) And then, so as not to offer the gods sacrifices of no value, they were led to eat those offerings too, and from this beginning of the practice, eating animals became an addition to the human diet which was based on crops. So just as in ancient times they had offered the gods first-fruits of crops and had been glad to eat them after the rite, when they sacrificed animals they thought they must do the same, even though holy ritual had not originally arranged it so, but they had honoured each of the gods with crops. (7) For those ritual acts were pleasing to Nature and to all the perception of the human soul: The altar was not stained by unmixed blood Of bulls: it was, for them, the worst abomination To wrench away the life, and then to eat The mighty limbs.275

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28 We may also reflect on the altar at Delos, preserved even now. No animal is brought to it or sacrificed at it, and it is called the Altar of the Pious. So not only did they abstain from animals when sacrificing, but those who founded it and those who use it were equally ascribed their share of piety. (2) The Pythagoreans, following this tradition, abstained from animal-eating all their lives, and when they did assign some animal to the gods as an offering in place of themselves, they ate only that, but continued to live for truth, not touching the others.276 (3) But we do not: in filling ourselves, we reach an extreme of lawlessness in such actions throughout our lives. (4) For the altars of the gods should not be stained with murder, and people should not eat such food, any more than their own bodies. The tradition still kept at Athens should be taken as a precept for the whole of our life. 29 In ancient times, as we said before, people sacrificed crops to the gods, but not animals, nor did they use animals for their own food.277 It is said that when there was a public sacrifice at Athens one Diomos, or Sopatros, who did not belong to the country by race but farmed land in Attica, had set out a cake and other offerings in full view on the table, to sacrifice them to the gods. One of the oxen coming from work devoured some and trampled others. He was greatly angered by this, seized an axe that was being sharpened nearby and struck down the ox. (2) The ox died, he recovered from his anger, and realised what he had done. He buried the ox, went into voluntary exile

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Book 2 on the grounds of impiety, and took refuge in Crete. (3) Drought took hold, and there was terrible crop failure. A public delegation was sent to consult the oracle, and the Pythia responded that the exile in Crete would expiate it, and when they had punished the murderer and raised the dead during the sacrifice in which he died, it would be better for those who tasted the dead and did not hold back.278 (4) An investigation was made, and the one responsible for the deed was found. Sopatros thought that he would escape his problem of being accursed if everyone did this communally. So he said to those sent to find him that an ox must be cut down by the city. (5) They were at a loss to know who would strike the blow, and he offered to do it if they made him a citizen and shared in the murder. This was agreed, and when they returned to the city, they organised the act like this, as the custom still remains among them. 30 They chose young girls as water-carriers. These bring water for people to sharpen the axe and the knife. When they had sharpened them, one man handed over the axe, another struck the ox, and yet another cut its throat. Then people skinned it, and everybody ate the ox. (2) After this had been done they stitched up the skin of the ox, stuffed it with straw and stood it up, looking as it did in life, and they yoked a plough to it as if it were working. (3) Then they held a murder trial and summoned all who shared in the act to defend themselves. The water-carriers said the men who did the sharpening were more to blame than they were, and those who had sharpened said it was the man who handed over the axe, and he said it was the man who cut the throat, and the man who did it blamed the knife, and since the knife could not speak, they found it guilty of murder.279 (4) From that day to this, every Diipoleia at Athens, on the acropolis, these participants carry out the sacrifice of the ox in the same way. They put a cake and ground grain on the bronze table, and drive round it the oxen that have been selected for the purpose, and the ox that eats the offerings is cut down. (5) There are still families of those who perform the rite. One group, descended from Sopatros who struck the blow, are all called boutupoi, ox-hitters; others, descended from the man who drove the ox round the table, are called kentriadai, goaders; and those descended from the man who cut the throat are called daitroi, carvers, because of the feast which follows the sharing-out of the meat. Having stuffed the skin, and been brought to trial, they threw the knife into the sea.280 31 So in ancient times it was not holy to kill the animals who work with us for our livelihood, and now we should guard against doing so.281 (2) And just as before it was not holy for people to partake of them, so now it should be thought not holy to take animals for food. But if this act should be done as worship offered to the divine, then at least we should repel this passion in its entirety from our bodies,

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Translation lest by getting our food where we should not, we have pollution as partner in our own lives.282 (3) If nothing else, we would all benefit greatly as regards restraint towards each other. In those whose perception turns away from laying hands on creatures of other kinds, intellect, very clearly, will hold back from those of the same kind.283 (4) Perhaps it would have been best to abstain outright from all; but since no one is without fault, it remains for those who come later to heal by purifications the previous faults concerned with food.284 (5) This would happen equally if we kept the horror before our eyes and cried out in the words of Empedocles Alas that the merciless day did not first destroy me, Before I committed atrocious crimes with my lips, over food!285 162

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(6) That our own perception is pained by faults, when we seek some remedy for existing evils 286 (7) life, so that each person, just as he offers pure sacrifices to the divine power, may obtain holiness and help from the gods. 32 The first and greatest help is that from crops, and from this alone we should make offerings to the gods and to the earth which produces them. Earth is the common hearth of gods and people, and everyone, leaning upon her as on a nurse and mother, must hymn her and love her as the one who gave us birth.287 (2) Thus we may again be judged worthy, when we reach the end of our life, to look upon the entire race of the gods in heaven, and now, seeing them, to honour them with those things for which they and we are co-responsible.288 We must all make offerings to them from the crops we have, but without thinking that we are all worthy to sacrifice to the gods. For just as not everything should be sacrificed to them, so not everyone’s sacrifice is equally pleasing to the gods. (3) These, then, are the main points of the arguments of Theophrastus against the sacrifice of animals, except for the myths he included; I have added, or summarised, a few things. 33 For myself, I am not trying to destroy the customs which prevail among each people: the state is not my present subject. But the laws by which we are governed allow the divine power to be honoured even by very simple and inanimate things, so by choosing the simplest we shall sacrifice in accordance with the law of the city, and will ourselves strive to offer a fitting sacrifice, pure in all respects when we approach the gods.289 (2) In any case, if the act of sacrifice has the value of a first-fruit offering and of thanksgiving to the gods for what we have from them for our needs, it would be quite irrational to abstain from animate creatures ourselves, yet make offerings of them to the gods. The gods are not worse than we are so that they need what we do not, nor is it holy to give first-fruits of a food from which we ourselves

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Book 2 abstain. (3) We have also found that human custom was like this when people ate no animate food and made no offerings of animals, but from the time they ate them, they also offered them to the gods. So now, presumably, it is proper for someone who abstains from animals to make offerings of those foods he does eat.290 34 So we too shall sacrifice. But we shall make, as is fitting, different sacrifices to different powers. (2) To the god who rules over all, as a wise man said, we shall offer nothing perceived by the senses, either by burning or in words. For there is nothing material which is not at once impure to the immaterial. So not even logos expressed in speech is appropriate for him, nor yet internal logos when it has been contaminated by the passion of the soul. But we shall worship him in pure silence and with pure thoughts about him.291 (3) We must, then, be joined with and made like him, and must offer our own uplifting as a holy sacrifice to the god, for it is both our hymn and our security. This sacrifice is fulfilled in dispassion of the soul and contemplation of the god.292 (4) For his offspring, the intelligible gods, hymn-singing in words should be added. For sacrifice is an offering to each god from what he has given, with which he sustains us and maintains our essence in being.293 (5) So, as a farmer offers corn-ears and fruits, so we offer them fine thoughts about them, giving thanks for what they have given us to contemplate, and for feeding us with the true food of seeing them, present with us, manifesting themselves, shining out to save us.294 35 But as it is, people, even many of those who are committed to philosophy, hesitate to do this. Concerned for reputation, rather than for honouring the gods, they circulate round the shrines, not even considering how and whether the approach should be made, nor committed enough to ask those who are wise about the gods how far and to what extent one should venture in this area.295 (2) But we shall not engage in any dispute with them, lest we too should be committed to deep study of such a question; we shall imitate the ancient holy men in making our chief offering to the gods from that contemplation which they themselves gave us, and of which we stand in need for our real security. 36 The Pythagoreans, who are committed students of numbers and lines, made their main offering to the gods from these. They call one number Athena, another Artemis, and likewise another Apollo; and again they call one justice and another temperance, and similarly for geometrical figures. (2) And they so pleased the gods with such offerings that they obtained their help when invoking each one with their dedications, and often used them for divination and for anything they needed in investigation.296 (3) But for the gods within the heaven, the wandering and the fixed (the sun should be taken as leader of them all and the moon second) we should kindle fire which is already

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kin to them, and we shall do what the theologian says.297 (4) He says that not a single animate creature should be sacrificed, but offerings should not go beyond barley-grains and honey and the fruits of the earth, including flowers. ‘Let not the fire burn on a bloodstained altar’, and the rest of what he says, for what need is there to copy out the words? (5) Someone concerned for piety knows that no animate creature is sacrificed to the gods, but to other daimones, either good or bad, and knows whose practice it is to sacrifice to them and to what extent these people need to do so.298 (6) For the rest, ‘let it remain unsaid’ by me; but it is not blameworthy to set before those of good understanding, to illuminate the discussion, thoughts which some Platonists have made public.299 This is what they say. 37 The first god, being incorporeal, unmoved and indivisible, neither contained in anything nor bound by himself, needs nothing external, as has been said.300 (2) Nor does the soul of the world, which by nature has three-dimensionality and self-movement; its nature is to choose beautiful and well-ordered movement, and to move the body of the world in accordance with the best principles. It has received the body into itself and envelops it, and yet is incorporeal and has no share in any passion.301 (3) To the other gods, the world and the fixed and wandering stars – visible gods composed of soul and body – we should return thanks as has been described, by sacrifices of inanimate things.302 (4) So there remains the multitude of invisible gods, whom Plato called daimones without distinction.303 People have given some of them names, and they receive from everyone honours equal to the gods and other forms of worship. Others have no name at all in most places, but acquire a name and cult inconspicuously from a few people in villages or in some cities. (5) The remaining multitude is given the general name of daimones, and there is a conviction about all of them that they can do harm if they are angered by being neglected and not receiving the accustomed worship, and on the other hand that they can do good to those who make them well-disposed by prayer and supplication and sacrifices and all that goes with them. 38 But the concept of daimones is confused and leads to serious misrepresentation,304 so it is necessary to give a rational analysis of their nature; for perhaps (they say)305 it is necessary to show why people have gone astray about them. So the following distinction should be made. (2) All the souls which, having issued from the universal soul, administer large parts of the regions below the moon, resting on their pneuma but controlling it by reason,306 should be regarded as good daimones who do everything for the benefit of those they rule, whether they are in charge of certain animals, or of crops which have been assigned to them, or of what happens for the sake of these – showers of rain, moderate winds, fine weather, and the other things which work with them, and the balance of seasons within

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Book 2 the year; or again, for our sake, they are in charge of skills, or of all kinds of education in the liberal arts, or of medicine and physical training and other such things. It is impossible for these daimones both to provide benefits and also to cause harm to the same beings. (3) Among them must be numbered the ‘transmitters’, as Plato calls them, who report ‘what comes from people to the gods and what comes from the gods to people’, carrying up our prayers to the gods as if to judges, and carrying back to us their advice and warnings through oracles.307 (4) But the souls which do not control the pneuma adjacent to them, but are mostly controlled by it, are for that very reason too much carried away, when the angers and appetites of the pneuma lead to impulse.308 These souls are also daimones, but may reasonably be called maleficent. 39 All these, and those that have the opposite power, are unseen and absolutely imperceptible to human senses. For they are not clad in a solid body,309 nor do they all have one shape, but they take many forms, the shapes which imprint and are stamped upon their pneuma are sometimes manifest and sometimes invisible, and the worse ones sometimes change their shape.310 (2) The pneuma, insofar as it is corporeal, is passible and corruptible. Though it is so bound by the souls that the form endures for a long time, it is not eternal; for it is reasonable to suppose that something continuously flows from them and that they are fed.311 (3) In the good daimones this is in balance, as in the bodies of those that are visible, but in the maleficent it is out of balance; they allot more to their passible element, and there is no evil that they do not attempt to do to the regions around the earth.312 Their character is wholly violent and deceptive and lacking the supervision of the greater divine power, so they usually make sudden intense onslaughts, like ambushes, sometimes trying to remain hidden and sometimes using force. So passions which come from them are acute.313 (4) But healing and setting to rights, which are from the better daimones, seem slower, for every good thing is gentle and consistent, progressing in good order and not going beyond what is right. (5) If you think like this, it will never be possible for you to fall into the worst of absurdities: that is, supposing that there is bad in the good ones and good in the bad ones.314 This is not the only way in which the argument is absurd, but most people have acquired the most contemptible ideas even about the gods, and pass them on to others. 40 One thing especially should be counted among the greatest harm done by the maleficent daimones: they are themselves responsible for the sufferings that occur around the earth (plagues, crop failures, earthquakes, droughts and the like), but convince us that the responsibility lies with those who are responsible for just the opposite. They evade blame themselves: their primary concern is to

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do wrong without being detected. (2) Then they prompt us to supplications and sacrifices, as if the beneficent gods were angry.315 They do such things because they want to dislodge us from a correct concept of the gods and convert us to themselves.316 (3) They themselves rejoice in everything that is likewise inconsistent and incompatible; slipping on (as it were) the masks of the other gods, they profit from our lack of sense, winning over the masses because they inflame people’s appetites with lust and longing for wealth and power and pleasure, and also with empty ambition from which arises civil conflicts and wars and kindred events. (4) Most terrible of all, they move on from there to persuade people that the same applies even to the greatest gods, to the extent that even the best god is made liable to these accusations, for they say it is by him that everything has been thrown topsy-turvy into confusion.317 (5) It is not only lay people who are victims of this, but even some of those who study philosophy; and each is responsible for the other, for among the students of philosophy those who do not stand clear of the general opinion318 come to agree with the masses, whereas the masses, hearing from those with a reputation for wisdom opinions which agree with their own, are confirmed in holding even more strongly such beliefs about the gods. 41 Literature, too, has further inflamed people’s convictions, by using discourse designed to astound and enchant, able to cast spells and to create belief in the most impossible things. But one must be firmly convinced that the good never harms and the bad never benefits. (2) As Plato says, ‘cooling is not done by heat but by its opposite’, and similarly ‘harm is not done by the just man’.319 Now the divine power must by nature be most just of all, or it would not be divine. So this [harmful] power, and this role, must be separated from the beneficent daimones, for the power which is naturally and deliberately harmful is the opposite of the beneficent, and opposites can never occur in the same. (3) The maleficent daimones harass mortals in many respects, some of them important, but in every respect there is no way that the good daimones will neglect their own concerns: they forewarn, so far as they are able, of the dangers impending from the maleficent daimones, by revelations in dreams, or through an inspired soul, or in many other ways. (4) And everyone would know and take precautions, if he could distinguish the signs they send; for they send signs to everyone, but not everyone understands what the signs mean, just as not everyone can read what is written, but only the person who has learned letters. (5) But it is through the opposite kind of daimones that all sorcery is accomplished, for those who try to achieve bad things through sorcery honour especially these daimones and in particular their chief.320 42 These daimones abound in impressions of all kinds, and can deceive by wonder-working. Unfortunate people, with their help,

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Book 2 prepare philtres and love-charms.321 For all self-indulgence and hope of riches and fame comes from them, and especially deceit, for lies are appropriate to them. (2) They want to be gods, and the power that rules them wants to be thought the greatest god. (3) It is they who rejoice in the ‘drink-offerings and smoking meat’ on which their pneumatic part grows fat, for it lives on vapours and exhalations, in a complex fashion and from complex sources, and it draws power from the smoke that rises from blood and flesh.322 43 So an intelligent, temperate man will be wary of making sacrifices through which he will draw such beings to himself. He will work to purify his soul in every way, for they do not attack a pure soul, because it is unlike them.323 (2) If it is necessary for cities to appease even these beings, that is nothing to do with us. In cities, riches and external and corporeal things are thought to be good and their opposites bad, and the soul is the least of their concerns.324 (3) But we, as far as possible, shall not need what those beings provide, but we make every effort, drawing on the soul and on external things, to become like God and those who accompany him – and this happens through dispassion, through carefully articulated concepts about what really is, and through a life which is directed to those realities325 – and to become unlike wicked people and daimones and anything else that delights in things mortal and material. (4) So we too shall sacrifice, in accordance with what Theophrastus said. The theologians agreed with this, knowing that the more we neglect the removal of passions from the soul, the more we are linked to the evil power, and it will be necessary to appease that too.326 (5) For as the theologians say, those who are bound by external things and are not yet in control of passions must avert that power too, for if they do not, their troubles will not cease. 44 So much, then, for discussion of sacrifices. But there remains a point which I made at the outset: it is not necessary that if animals should be sacrificed, they should also be eaten.327 Here is a demonstration that it is necessary not to eat them, even if it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice them. (2) All the theologians agreed that in apotropaic sacrifices one must not partake of the victims, and must use purifications. No one, they say, should go into town or a private house without first cleansing clothes and body in a river or a spring.328 So they warned those to whom they assigned the task of sacrifice to abstain from the victims and to make themselves holy in advance329 by fasting, especially by abstinence from animate creatures. (3) Holiness, they said, is a protection which helps them to be wary, like a token or a divine seal that guards against suffering harm from those the sacrificer approaches and appeases. (4) Thus he is in a condition which is the opposite of what he is doing, and is more divine because

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it is purer, and he remains unharmed in body and in the passions of the soul, surrounded by holiness as if by a rampart. 45 That is why even sorcerers have thought such advance protection necessary; but it is not effective in all circumstances, for they stir up wicked daimones to gratify their lusts. (2) So holiness is not for sorcerers, but for godly men who are wise about the gods, and it brings as a guard on all sides, for those who practise it, their appropriation to the divine.330 (3) If only sorcerers would practise it constantly, they would have no enthusiasm for sorcery, because holiness would exclude them from enjoyment of the things for the sake of which they commit impiety. But, being filled with passions, they abstain for a little from impure foods, yet are full of impurity and pay the penalty for their lawlessness towards the universe: some penalties are inflicted by the beings they themselves provoke, some by the justice which watches over all mortal concerns, both actions and thoughts. (4) Holiness, both internal and external, belongs to a godly man, who strives to fast from the passions of the soul just as he fasts from those foods which arouse passions, who feeds on wisdom about the gods and becomes like them by right thinking about the divine; a man sanctified by intellectual sacrifice, who approaches the god in white clothing331 and with a truly pure dispassion in the soul, with a body which is light and not weighed down with the alien juices of other creatures or with passions of the soul. 46 In the shrines which people have allocated to gods, even footwear must be clean, and sandals spotless; in our father’s temple, this universe, should we not keep holy our last external garment, the skin tunic,332 and live with it holy in the temple of the father? (2) If danger lay only in staining it, perhaps it would be possible to overlook this and to become slack. But as it is, all the perceptible body carries effluences from the daimones of matter, and together with the impurity that comes from flesh and blood there is present the power which is its friend and companion because of their likeness and relatedness.333 47 So the theologians were right to be concerned for abstinence, and the Egyptian also told us of this, giving a reason which is entirely in accord with nature and which he tested by experience. A base, irrational soul, which leaves the body because it has been violently seized from it, remains with it; so when people die by violence their souls too are kept close by the body (and this is an obstacle to taking oneself out by violence).334 (2) So the violent slaughter of animals forces their souls to take pleasure in the bodies they have left, and the soul is in no way prevented from being in the place to which it is drawn by that which is akin to it; that is why many souls have been seen lamenting, and the souls of the unburied remain by their bodies. Sorcerers use these souls for their own service, compelling them by

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Book 2 possession of the body or part of it.335 (3) Now when they investigated this, and the nature of a base soul and the kinship and pleasure which it feels for the body from which it has been torn, they reasonably guarded against feasts on flesh, so that they should not be disturbed by alien souls, violent and impure, drawn towards their kin, and should not be obstructed in their solitary approach to God by the presence of disruptive daimones. 48 Experience taught them, through many examples, that the nature of the kindred body attracts the soul. For instance, those who want to take into themselves the souls of divinatory animals swallow the most important parts, such as the hearts of ravens or moles or falcons, and have the soul present in them, giving oracles like a god, entering them together with the ingestion of the body.336 49 So the philosopher, priest of the god who rules all, reasonably abstains from all animate food, working to approach the god, alone to the alone, by his own effort, without disruption from an entourage, and he is wary because he has fully investigated the necessities of nature.337 (2) The real philosopher has knowledge of many things: he notes signs, he understands the facts of nature, he is intelligent and orderly and moderate, protecting himself in all respects.338 (3) And just as a priest of one of the particular gods is expert in setting up cult-statues of this god, and in his rites and initiations and purifications and the like, so the priest of the god who rules all is expert in the making of his cult-statue and in purifications and the other rites by which he is linked to the god.339 50 Priests and diviners of religion in this world instruct themselves and others to stay clear of tombs, of sacrilegious men, menstruating women,340 sexual intercourse, any shameful or lamentable sight, anything heard which arouses passion; for often something that disturbs the diviner comes from the presence of unclean people, and that is why they say that sacrifice at the wrong time brings more harm than good. If this is so, shall the priest of the father allow himself to become a tomb for dead bodies, full of contamination, when he wants to converse with the greater? (2) It is enough to have contact with some aspects of death in the taking of crops for our life here.341 But this subject must be postponed: there is more to specify about sacrifices. 51 Someone might say that we destroy a large part of divination, that from entrails, if we abstain from the destruction of animals. This person should destroy people too, for they say that the future is more apparent in human entrails; indeed, many barbarians use humans for divination by entrails.342 (2) But, as it would be injustice and aggression to destroy a fellow-human for the sake of divination, so it is unjust to slaughter an irrational animal343 for the sake of divination. (3) Whether the gods manifest signs, or daimones do, or whether

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the soul of the animal, liberated from it, responds to the question by signs in the entrails, is not a matter for discussion now.344 52 Those whose life is tossed about in the external world we leave, when once they have been impious towards themselves, to be carried wherever they are carried.345 (2) But we say with good reason that the philosopher whom we describe, who is detached from external things, will not importune the daimones or be in need of diviners or the entrails of animals, for he has practised detachment from the things with which divination is concerned. (3) He does not stoop to marriage, so as to importune the diviner about marriage, or to trade; he does not ask about a slave, or about promotion and the other kinds of human fame. What he does seek to know, no diviner or entrails of animals will show him clearly.346 (4) Himself through himself, as we say, approaching the god, who is established in his true entrails, he will receive instructions for eternal life, for all of him has flowed together there, and he will pray to be ‘the intimate of great Zeus’, not of a diviner.347 53 If some necessity presses hard, there are good daimones who run before a man who lives like this, the house-slave of the god, and will tell him through dreams and tokens and voices what will happen and what it is necessary to guard against.348 One must only abstain from evil, and acknowledge as a friend and companion that which is most honoured in all and everything that is good in the universe.349 (2) But vice and ignorance of the divine are fearfully ready to despise and mock what they do not know, since nature does not shout it aloud in words which can be heard, but, being of the intellect, she initiates by the intellect those who revere her.350 (3) And even if one accepts the practice of sacrifice for the sake of foreknowing the future, it does not follow that one must necessarily accept the eating of flesh, just as any kind of sacrifice to gods or daimones need not entail eating. History, not only that recorded by Theophrastus but much else besides, has handed down the memory of how in ancient times they sacrificed people, and that does not mean that people should be eaten.351 54 To show that we are not just saying this, but that history is full of examples, it will be enough to cite the following. (2) In Rhodes, on the sixth day of the month Metageitnion, they used to sacrifice a human to Kronos. This custom prevailed for a long time before it was changed. They kept in custody, until the festival of Kronos, one of those condemned to public execution, then when the festival began they led him outside the gates opposite the shrine of Artemis Best in Counsel, gave him wine to drink and cut his throat.352 (3) And in Salamis, which used to be called Koronis, in the month which the Cypriots call Aphrodisios, they used to sacrifice a human to Agraulos, the daughter of Kekrops and of the nymph Agraulis. This custom

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Book 2 persisted until the time of Diomedes, and then it changed, so that the human was sacrificed to Diomedes. The temple of Athena and that of Agraulos and Diomedes are enclosed by one precinct. The victim, led by the ephebes, ran three times round the altar. Then the priest struck him in the throat with a spear-point, and they burnt the entire body on the pyre which had been built.353 55 Diphilos king of Cyprus abolished this rite: he lived at the time of Seleukos the theologian,354 and changed the custom to the sacrifice of an ox. The daimôn accepted the ox in place of the human, so the sacrifice has the same value. (2) Amosis, as Manetho testifies in his Antiquity and Piety, abolished the custom of human sacrifice in Heliopolis in Egypt. Victims were sacrificed to Hera, and they were inspected just like the calves which are sought out as pure and then marked. Three were sacrificed in the day. Amosis gave orders that the same number of wax figures should be substituted.355 (3) In Chios they used to sacrifice a human to Dionysos Omadios, tearing him to pieces; this also happened in Tenedos, according to Euelpis of Karystos.356 (4) Apollodorus357 says that the Lacedaemonians sacrificed a human to Ares. 56 In great disasters, such as wars and plagues and droughts, the Phoenicians used to choose by vote, for sacrifice to Kronos, one of those dearest to them. The Phoenician History, which Sanchuniathon wrote in Phoenician and Philo of Byblos translated into Greek in eight books, is full of people who sacrificed.358 (2) Istros, in his collection of Cretan sacrifices, says that the Kouretes in ancient times sacrificed children to Kronos.359 (3) Pallas, who wrote, in the reign of the emperor Hadrian, the best account of the mysteries of Mithras, says that human sacrifice had been abolished almost everywhere.360 (4) For in Laodicea in Syria they used to sacrifice a girl to Athena every year, but now it is a deer. (5) The Carthaginians in Libya used to make this sacrifice, and Iphikrates stopped it. (6) The Doumatenoi of Arabia used to sacrifice a child every year and bury him under the altar which they used as an sacred image. (7) Phylarchos reports that all Greeks used to kill human beings before setting out to war. (8) I pass over the Thracians and Scythians, and how the Athenians killed the daughter of Erechtheus and Praxithea.361 (9) But even now, who does not know that a human being is slaughtered in the Great City at the festival of Zeus Latiarios?362 (10) Now it is obvious that human flesh is not also to be eaten because, through some necessity, a human being has been taken for sacrifice. (11) People under siege and starving have eaten each other, but they were held to be accursed, and the action impious. 57 After the first war between Rome and Carthage over Sicily, the Phoenician mercenaries defected and brought the Libyans to join them. Hamilcar Barca marched against them, and so reduced them

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to starvation that when all supplies failed they ate first those who fell in battle, then prisoners of war, then slaves, and finally they fell upon one another and, drawing lots, ate their fellow-soldiers. When Hamilcar had them in his power, he had the elephants trample them to death, saying that it was not holy for them to mix with other people.363 (2) He did not accept cannibalism because some people had brought themselves to do it, nor did his son Hannibal, who was advised when he marched on Italy to accustom his army to cannibalism, so that they would not be short of food. (3) Now it does not follow that, because famine and war cause the eating of other animals, we must also accept doing so for pleasure: we have not agreed to cannibalism. Nor does it follow that, because people have sacrificed animals to certain powers, we must also eat them; for those who sacrificed humans did not for that reason eat human flesh. 58 These arguments have demonstrated that eating animals does not necessarily follow from sacrificing them. And the theologians themselves have established that those who have learned about the powers in the universe offer blood-sacrifices not to gods, but to daimones.364 (2) They have also reminded us that some daimones are maleficent, but some are good, and will not trouble us if we make offerings to them only from what we eat and what we use to nourish either body or soul. (3) I shall add a little more, to show how the undistorted ideas of the many aspire to the right concept of the gods, and then conclude this book. (4) The poets who content themselves with little say: Who’s such a fool, so utterly at sea, So credulous, to hope all gods rejoice And take as honour due these fleshless bones, This heated bile, which even hungry dogs Reject as food?365 (5) Another says Ground grain, and frankincense, and cakes I’ll buy. I sacrifice now not for friends, but gods.366

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59 When Apollo advises sacrifice according to ancestral tradition, he seems to encourage us towards the ancient custom. The ancient sacrifice, as I have shown, was of cakes and crops.367 (2) From this came the words thusia [sacrifice] and thuêla [sacrificial act] and thumela [sacrifical altar], and thuein [to sacrifice] itself came from thumian [to send up smoke], and so did the current word epithuein [to sacrifice on the altar].368 What we now call thuein they called erdein [to accomplish]:

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Book 2 To Apollo they accomplished Full hecatombs of bulls and goats.369 60 Those who introduced extravagance into sacrifices do not know that they introduced with it a swarm of evils: superstition,370 luxury, the belief that the divine power can be bribed and that injustice can be cured by sacrifices. (2) Why else have some sacrificed triads with gilded horns, and others hecatombs, and Olympias mother of Alexander used to make all her sacrifices thousands, when once extravagance had led to superstition? (3) When a young man thinks that the gods delight in extravagance, and, as they say, in feasts of cattle and other animals, when will he voluntarily act with temperance? If he supposes that the gods delight in his sacrifices, how will he not think that he is allowed to do wrong, since he intends to redeem his fault with sacrifices? (4) But if he is convinced that the gods have no need of these, but consider the character of those who approach them, taking the greatest sacrifice to be correct understanding of them and of things in general, how will he not be temperate and holy and just?371 61 The best offering to the gods is a pure intellect and a soul unaffected by passion; it is also appropriate to make them moderate offerings of other things, not casually but with full commitment. (2) Honours to the gods must be like the front seats given to good men, and like standing up for them and asking them to sit down, not like paying taxes. (3) If a man can say

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If you remember my good deeds and love me, Long since, Philinos, you repaid my favour: it was for this I showed you favour first surely a god will be satisfied with this.372 (4) That is why Plato says ‘it is right for a good man to sacrifice and always to be in conversation with the gods by prayers and dedications and sacrifices and all forms of worship’, but for a bad man ‘great effort about the gods is in vain’.373 (5) The good man knows what must be sacrificed, from what one must abstain, what should be eaten and from what offerings should be made; the bad man, bringing the gods honours suited to his own disposition and to what he wants, acts impiously rather than piously. (6) That is why Plato thinks the philosopher should not be involved in bad customs, since it is neither dear to the gods nor advantageous to people, but should try to change them for the better, or, if he cannot, should not adapt himself to them, but should go his way on the straight path, fearing neither danger from the many nor any other abuse that may arise.374 (7) It would be terrible if, when the Syrians would not eat fish or the Hebrews pigs, and most of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians would not eat cows, and when many kings tried

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Translation hard to make them change they would endure death rather than break the law, we should choose to break the laws of nature and the precepts of the gods for fear of people and what they might say.375 (8) The divine chorus of gods and divine men would be very angry seeing us open-mouthed at the opinions of bad people and living subject to fear of them, we who every day practise in our lifetime dying to others.376 BOOK 3

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1 I have shown in the previous two books, Firmus Castricius, that the eating of animate creatures contributes neither to temperance and simplicity nor to piety, which especially lead to the contemplative life, but rather opposes them. (2) Justice in its finest aspect is piety towards the gods, and piety is achieved especially by abstinence, so there is no need to fear that we may somehow infringe justice towards people by maintaining holiness towards the gods. (3) Socrates, in reply to those who argue that our end is pleasure, said that even if all hogs and he-goats agreed with this, he would not be convinced that our happiness lies in experiencing pleasure, so long as intellect rules over all.377 And we, even if all wolves and vultures approve of meateating, will not agree that what they say is just, so long as humans are naturally harmless and inclined to refrain from acquiring pleasures for themselves by harming others.378 (4) Moving on, then, to the discussion of justice, since our opponents say that it should extend only to beings like us and therefore rule out the irrational animals,379 let us present the belief which is true and also Pythagorean,380 by demonstrating that every soul is rational in that it shares in perception and memory. Once that is proved, we can reasonably, even on their principles, extend justice to every animal.381 (5) Let us briefly summarise the opinions of the ancients.382 2 According to the Stoics there are two kinds of logos, the internal and the expressive, and moreover there is correct and faulty logos.383 So it is proper to state exactly which of these animals lack. Is it only correct logos, and not logos altogether? Or is it logos in all respects, both the internal and that which proceeds to the outside?384 (2) They appear to predicate complete deprivation of logos, not just of correct logos, for in the latter case even animals would be not irrational but rational, in the same way as (according to the Stoics) almost all human beings are. (3) For, according to them, there have been one or even two wise men, in whom alone logos is correct, and the rest are all bad, even if some are making progress and others are overflowing with badness, and even though all alike are rational.385 (4) It is self-love386 which leads them to say that all the other animals without exception are non-rational, meaning by ‘non-rationality’ complete

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Book 3 deprivation of logos. But if we must speak the truth, not only can logos be seen in absolutely all animals, but in many of them it has the groundwork for being perfected.387 3 Now since there are two kinds of logos, one in expression and one in disposition, let us begin with expressive logos, logos organised by voice.388 (2) If expressive logos is voice signifying with the tongue that which is experienced internally and in the soul (this is the most general definition, which does not depend on any school but only on the concept of logos) what in this is absent from those animals that speak? And why should a creature not first have thought what it experiences, even before it says what it is going to say? I mean by ‘thought’ that which is silently voiced in the soul.389 (3) Now since that which is voiced by the tongue is logos however it is voiced, whether in barbarian or Greek, dog or cattle fashion, animals which have a voice share in logos, humans speaking in accordance with human customs and animals in accordance with the customs each has acquired from the gods and nature.390 (4) And if we do not understand them, so what? Greeks do not understand Indian,391 nor do those brought up on Attic understand Scythian or Thracian or Syrian: the sound that each makes strikes the others like the calling of cranes. Yet for each their [language] can be written in letters and articulated, as ours can for us; but for us the [language] of Syrians, for instance, or Persians cannot be articulated or written, just as that of animals cannot be for any people.392 (5) For we are aware only of noise and sound, because we do not understand (for instance) Scythian conversation, and they seem to us to be calling and articulating nothing, but making one noise which is longer or shorter, whereas the modification of the noise to convey meaning does not strike us at all;393 yet to them their speech is easy to understand and very diverse, just as our accustomed speech is to us. Similarly in the case of animals, understanding comes to them in a way which is peculiar to each species, but we can hear only noise deficient in meaning, because no one who has been taught our language has taught us to translate into it what is said by animals. (6) Yet, if we are to believe the ancients and those who lived in our own time and our fathers’ time, there are those who are said to have heard and understood the speech of animals. In ancient times there were Melampous and Tiresias and the like, and not long ago Apollonius of Tyana, of whom it is said that when he was with his companions a swallow flew over and called. ‘The swallow,’ he said, ‘is telling other swallows that a donkey has fallen outside the town carrying a load of grain, which spilled on the ground when the load-bearer fell.’394 (7) A friend of mine used to relate how he was lucky enough to have a slave-boy who understood all the speech of birds, and everything they said was a prophecy announcing what would shortly happen; but he lost his understanding because his mother

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feared that he would be sent as a gift to the emperor, and urinated in his ears as he slept.395 4 Let us pass over these stories because of our natural trait of incredulity; but no one, I think, is unaware that some peoples even now have a kind of affinity for understanding the speech of some animals. The Arabs can hear ravens, the Etruscans eagles, and perhaps we and all humans would understand all animals, if a snake cleaned our ears too.396 (2) As it is, the complexity and diversity of their speech demonstrates that it has meaning: animals are heard to speak differently when they are afraid, when they are calling, when they are asking to be fed, when they are friendly and when they are challenging to a fight. (3) The diversity is so great that even those who have given their life to observing animals find it very difficult to distinguish the variations, because there are so many.397 Diviners have interpreted differences, up to a certain number, in the calls of crows and ravens, but they have left the rest as being difficult for a human to understand. (4) But when animals speak to each other clearly and meaningfully, even if not all of us can understand, and are even seen to imitate us and learn Greek and understand their owners, who would be so brazen as to deny that they have logos just because he cannot himself understand what they say? Ravens and jays and redbreasts and parrots imitate people and remember what they hear and, when they are taught, listen to their teacher; and many, because of what they have learned, have informed on wrongdoers within the household.398 (5) The Indian hyena, which the natives call ‘corocotta’, speaks in so human a way, even without a teacher, that it prowls around houses and calls whoever looks like an easy prey, imitating their nearest and dearest and the speech to which the person called would respond in all circumstances. So the Indians, even though they know this, are deceived by the resemblance, go out in response to the call and get eaten.399 (6) But if not all animals imitate us or can easily learn our [language], so what? Not every human being finds it easy to learn or to imitate not just animal [language], but even five or so human languages.400 And perhaps some animals do not speak because they are not taught, or because they are impeded by the vocal organs.401 (7) I myself reared, at Carthage, a tame partridge which flew to me, and as time went on and habit made it very tame, I observed it not only making up to me and being attentive and playing, but even speaking in response to my speech and, so far as was possible, replying, differently from the way that partridges call to each other.402 It did not speak when I was silent; it only responded when I spoke. 5 It is reported that even some voiceless animals readily respond to their masters, more so than a human friend would. A lamprey which belonged to the Roman Crassus would come to him when called

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Book 3 by name, and had such an effect on him that he mourned when it died, though he had earlier borne with moderation the loss of three children. Many people say that the eels in the Arethusa fountain and the perch in the Maeander respond when they are called.403 (2) So the impression is the same as in one who speaks, whether or not it reaches the tongue. How then can it not be ignorant to call only human language logos, because we understand it, and dismiss the language of other animals?404 (3) It is as if ravens claimed that theirs was the only language, and we lack logos, because we say things which are not meaningful to them, or the people of Attica said that Attic is the only language, and thought that others who do not share the Attic way of speaking405 lack logos. Yet the Attic speaker would understand a raven sooner than he would a Syrian or Persian speaking Syrian or Persian. (4) But surely it is absurd to judge rationality or non-rationality by whether speech is or is not easy to understand, or by silence or voice. That way one would also say that the god who is above all,406 and the other gods, lack logos because they do not speak. (5) But the gods communicate with us in silence, and birds understand them more quickly than humans do, and having understood pass on the message as best they can, different birds being envoys to humans from different gods: the eagle for Zeus, the falcon and the raven for Apollo, the stork for Hera, the krex and the owl for Athena, the crane for Demeter, and others for others.407 (6) Moreover, those of us who observe animals and live with them know their calls. The huntsman recognises from the response of the barking dog that it is searching for the hare, then that it has found, then that it is chasing, then that it has caught; and if it is lost, he knows that it is lost.408 (7) And the herdsman knows that the cow is hungry or thirsty or tired or in heat or looking for her calf. The lion shows by roaring that it is threatening, the wolf shows by howling that it is suffering, and the bleating of the sheep alerts the shepherd to what they need. 6 Nor are animals unaware of the voice of humans, whether the humans are angry or friendly or calling, whether the voice is hunting or wanting something or giving something, in short, whatever it is doing: to every one they respond appropriately. They could not do this unless like worked upon like in understanding.409 (2) Deer and bulls and other animals are calmed by music, and become tame instead of savage. (3) And even those who decree that animals lack logos say that dogs understand dialectic, and make use of a multiple disjunction when they are tracking and reach a crossroads. ‘The beast has gone down this road, or that one, or the other. It didn’t go down this one, or this one, so it was this one, and all that remains is to follow it down this.’410 (4) But there is an obvious response: animals do this by nature, because no one has taught them, as if we too had not411 acquired logos by nature, even if we ourselves posit some words

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because we are naturally well equipped to do so. (5) But if we are to believe Aristotle, animals have been seen teaching their young not only to do other things but even to speak, as the nightingale teaches her chick to sing. And as he says himself, animals learn many things from each other, and many things from humans;412 and everyone testifies that he spoke truly – every horse-breaker and groom and rider and charioteer, every huntsman and mahout and herdsman and all the trainers of wild animals and birds. (6) A well-informed person concedes understanding to animals on this evidence; an ignorant person who has done no research about them is carried away, collaborating with his own aggression towards them. How, indeed, would he not abuse and misrepresent creatures he has chosen to carve up as if they were stone? (7) But Aristotle and Plato, Empedocles and Pythagoras and Democritus, and all who have sought to grasp the truth about animals, have recognised that they share in logos.413 7 The logos which is within them, their internal logos, is also to be demonstrated. As Aristotle says somewhere, variation seems not to be a distinction in essence, but is a question of more and less, just as many people think that the gods are quite different from us, but that the difference is not in essence, but in the exactness or otherwise of logos.414 (2) Almost everyone agrees that animals are like us in perception and in organisation generally with regard both to senseorgans and to the flesh. They share like us not only in natural experiences and the movements they cause, but even in unnatural and unhealthy experiences which are observed in them.415 No sensible person would say that animals are incapable of a rational disposition because they are quite different in their bodily constitution, seeing that in human beings too there is great variation of constitution according to race and people, yet also agreeing that all are rational. (3) Donkeys catch colds, and if the illness descends to the lung, the donkey dies as a human does; horses have abscesses and consumption like humans, get tetanus and gout and fever and rabies, and sometimes ‘cast down their eyes’.416 A pregnant mare miscarries, like a human being, if she smells a light which has been snuffed. (4) Cattle get fever and go mad, and so do camels. Crows suffer from mange and leprosy, as do dogs; and dogs also suffer from gout and rabies. Pigs become hoarse, dogs even more so, and the illness in humans is called ‘dog-choker’ from dogs.417 (5) These instances are well-known because these animals live with us, but we lack experience of other animals because we are not familiar with them. (6) Animals also become soft when castrated: cocks cease to crow, and change their voice to the female kind as humans do; the horns and voice of a castrated bull cannot be distinguished from those of the female. Deer no longer shed their antlers, but retain them, as eunuchs do their hair; but if they have no horns they do not grow them, as with men who were castrated

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Book 3 before their beard grew.418 (7) Thus the bodies of almost all animals are like ours as regards illness. 8 As for the passions of the soul, see if they are not all similar, beginning with perception.419 It is not the case that humans alone taste flavours and see colours, that their sense of smell perceives scents, their hearing perceives sounds, and their sense of touch perceives hot and cold and whatever else is tactile, as if all animals do not do likewise. (2) Animals are neither deprived of perception by not being human, nor do they lack rationality by not being human: if that were so, the gods will be deprived of rationality by not being human, or else we will if the gods are rational.420 (3) On the contrary, animals seem to surpass us in perception. What human being, even the legendary Lynkeios, sees as clearly as a snake [drakôn]? (That is why poets call seeing drakein.) ‘High though the eagle flies, the hare does not escape him.’421 (4) Who has sharper hearing than the cranes? They can hear from farther away than a human being can even see. As for the sense of smell, almost all animals so far surpass us that they are aware of what escapes us, and they can recognise each species just by smelling its tracks. Humans use dogs as guides if they need to follow a boar or a stag. (5) The weather is slow to affect us, but affects other animals at once, so that we use them as signs of what is coming. Animals can distinguish flavours so well that they can determine exactly what is unhealthy, healthy or toxic, but among humans not even doctors can do so.422 (6) Aristotle says that animals with keener perceptions are wiser.423 Bodily variations can make [creatures] easy or difficult to affect, and can make them have reason more or less accessible; but they cannot make the soul quite different in its essence when they have not altered perceptions or passions or made them go away altogether.424 (7) Let it be agreed, then, that the difference is a matter of more and less, not of complete deprivation, nor of a have and a have-not. But just as in the same species one has a healthier body and another a less healthy, and there is also a great difference with regard to illness and in good or bad constitutions, so it is for souls: one is good, another bad. Among bad souls some are more so, others less so. Nor is there sameness among good souls: Socrates is not good in the same way as Aristotle or Plato, and in people of similar reputation there is not sameness. (8) So, even if we think more than they do, animals are not to be deprived of thinking, any more than partridges are to be deprived of flying because falcons fly more, or indeed falcons because the goshawk flies more than they and all other birds do. One might concede that the soul is affected together with the body, and is affected by the body’s good or bad disposition, but certainly not that it changes its own nature. (9) But if it is only affected together with the body, and uses the body as an instrument, then with a body differently organised from our own it

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would be able to do many things which we cannot, and would be affected by that body’s disposition, but it would not change its own nature.425 9 Now it is to be demonstrated that there is also a rational [soul]426 in animals and that they are not deprived of wisdom. (2) First of all, each animal knows where it is weak and where it is strong, and it protects the former and makes use of the latter, as the leopard uses its teeth, the lion both claws and teeth, the horse its hoof and the bull its horns, the cock its spur and the scorpion its sting. The snakes in Egypt use their spit (that is why they are called ‘spitters’) and blind the eyes of attackers; other animals use other means, each safeguarding itself.427 (3) Again, the animals that are strong keep away from humans, whereas the less noble animals keep away from stronger beasts but stay with humans, either at some distance, like sparrows and swallows in roof-eaves, or sharing human life as dogs do. (4) Animals also change their location according to the season, and know everything that relates to their advantage. Similarly, one might observe such reasoning in fish and birds. (5) The ancients collected many more such instances in their works on the wisdom of animals, and Aristotle, who took the greatest trouble over the question, says that all animals devise their home428 with regard to their means of living and their security. 10 Anyone who says that animals have these qualities by nature fails to realise that he is saying they are rational by nature, or else that logos does not exist in us by nature, so perfection too does not develop in accordance with what we naturally are.429 (2) The divine did not become rational by learning: there was no time when it was non-rational, but it was and was rational at the same time; it was not prevented from being rational because it did not acquire logos from teaching. (3) But in the case of other animals, just as in the case of humans, nature taught most of what is in them, and learning added other things; animals are taught some things by each other, and others, as we have said, by people. Animals have memory, which is of prime importance in the acquisition of reasoning and wisdom.430 (4) There are also vices and grudges in animals, even if they are not so overflowing as in humans, for the vice of animals is less serious than that of people.431 For instance, a builder would not lay down the foundations of a house unless he were sober, nor would a shipwright lay the keel of a ship if he were not in good health, or a farmer graft a vine if he did not have his mind on the job; but almost everyone procreates when drunk. (5) But animals do not. They mate for the sake of offspring, and in most cases, when the male has made the female pregnant, he does not try to mount her and she does not accept him.432 It is obvious how much unbridled human lust there is in these matters. (6) In animals, the partner is aware of labour pains, and

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Book 3 many share them, as cocks do. Some also help to incubate, as male pigeons do.433 They think in advance about the place where they will give birth. Each animal, having given birth, cleans its offspring and itself. (7) Anyone who observes animals will see that they all go in order; they go to meet the person who feeds them and make much of him, they recognise their master and warn against enemies. 11 Who does not know how animals that live in groups observe justice towards each other? Every ant does, every bee, and so do creatures like them.434 Who has not heard of the marital chastity shown by female ring-doves, who, if they have been seduced, kill the adulterer if they catch him? Who has not heard of the justice which storks show to their parents?435 (2) In every creature there is evident a particular virtue to which it is naturally disposed, but neither nature nor the consistency of the virtue takes rationality away from them; and that is the point which must be proved if the acts of virtues are not also appropriate to rational aptitude. (3) If we do not understand how an animal acts because we cannot enter into their reasoning, we shall not therefore accuse them of non-rationality. No one can enter the intellect of God, but from the acts of the sun we agree with those who proclaim him to be intellectual and rational.436 12 One might be surprised at those who derive justice from reason, and say that animals which are not in our society are savage and unjust, but do not extend justice to those that are in our society. (2) Just as for humans life is over when society is taken away, so also for animals. Birds and dogs and many of the quadrupeds, such as goats, horses, sheep, donkeys, mules, perish if they are deprived of human society. (3) Nature that created them has made them need humans and has also made humans need them, establishing an innate justice in them towards us and in us towards them.437 (4) If some animals are savage to humans, that is no wonder, for Aristotle was right to say that if every creature had abundance of food, they would not behave savagely to each other or to humans. It is for food, necessary and simple though it is, that their enmities and friendships arise, and also for territory.438 (5) If humans were reduced to such straits as the animals are, how much more savage would they be even than the animals which have a reputation for savagery? War and famine have shown this, when people do not refrain even from cannibalism; and even without war and famine they eat the tame animals which live with us.439 13 But someone may say that animals are rational, but have no connection with us. Yet it was on the grounds that animals are non-rational that they removed the connection with them: they made them non-rational, then there was [the argument] of those who derive our society with them from need, not from reason. But our task was to show whether they are rational, not whether they have made

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contracts with us. Not every human being makes a contract with us, yet no one would say that a man who does not make a contract is non-rational.440 (2) But most animals are enslaved to humans, and, as someone rightly said, though enslaved by the ignorance of humans, they have nevertheless by wisdom and justice made their masters into servants and carers for themselves.441 Their vices, indeed, are obvious, but their rationality is most apparent in their vices.442 They show jealousy and rivalry over females, and so do the females over the males. (3) But the one vice they do not have is hostility to someone of goodwill: their response in every case is total goodwill. They have so much confidence in the person of goodwill that they follow wherever he leads, even if it is to slaughter or to obvious danger; and they feel goodwill to their owner even though he nurtures them for his sake, not for theirs. But humans conspire against no one so much as the person who nurtures them; there is no one for whose death they pray more fervently. 14 Animals use reason so much in what they do that often, knowing that baits are used to trap them, they approach because of uncontrolled appetite or because of hunger: but some do not approach directly, others hesitate and try if they can remove the food without being caught, and often reasoning wins and their passion goes away. Some even insult the human contraption by urinating on it.443 Others, because of gluttony and knowing they will be caught, and no worse in this than the companions of Odysseus, eat and ignore the risk of death.444 (2) Some people have tried, correctly, to show from the places which have fallen to the lot of animals that they are much more sensible than we are. For, they say, just as the beings which inhabit the aether are rational, so are those that live immediately next to it, such as those in the air; then those that live in water are different, then so are those that live on earth. We ourselves live in the dregs, and we cannot deduce the superiority of the gods from the place they live in without making a similar deduction about mortals.445 15 When animals acquire skills, and human skills at that, learning to dance and to drive chariots, to fight as a gladiator and walk a tightrope, or even to write and read, to play the flute and the lyre, to shoot arrows and ride horses, will you still doubt that they have a receptive capacity, when you see in them what they have received?446 (2) Where do they receive it, unless the logos in which skills are established was already there? Animals do not hear our language as noise, but they have an awareness of the difference among signs, and that comes from rational understanding.447 (3) But, people say, animals do human things badly. Nor do all humans do them well; otherwise people would win or lose contests to no purpose. (4) But, they say, animals do not deliberate or hold assemblies or sit in judgement. Tell me, do all humans do so? Do not many people act

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Book 3 before they deliberate? And how could anyone show that animals do not deliberate?448 No one can give proof of this, and those who have written about particular kinds of animals have shown the opposite. (5) Thus the other debating points that are made against them are valueless, for instance that they do not have cities: nor do the waggon-dwelling Scyths, I shall reply, or the gods. Animals have no written laws, they say; nor do humans, so long as things go well for them. It is said that Apis was the first to legislate for the Greeks, when they had need of it.449 16 Humans, then, because of their gluttony, think that animals do not have logos, but gods and godlike men honour them equally with suppliants. (2) The god said in an oracle to Aristodikos of Kyme that the sparrows were his suppliants. Socrates took oaths by animals, and even before him so did Rhadamanthos.450 (3) The Egyptians actually reckoned them as gods, either thinking they were really gods, or deliberately making images of gods with the faces of cattle and birds and other creatures so that people would abstain from them just as from humans, or for other more mystical reasons. (4) The Greeks likewise added a ram’s horns to the cult-statue of Zeus, and a bull’s to that of Dionysos;451 they put Pan together from a man and a goat, and gave the Muses and the Sirens wings, and also Victory and Iris and Eros and Hermes. (5) Pindar, in his Processional Odes, makes all the gods, when they were pursued by Typhon, take on the likeness not of humans but of the other animals.452 And they say that when Zeus was in love, he became one time a bull, another time an eagle and a swan. Through these stories the ancients demonstrated honour for animals, and even more when they said that a goat nursed Zeus.453 (6) The Cretans had a law of Rhadamanthos that they must swear by all the animals. When Socrates swore by the dog and the goose, it was not a joke: he took his oath like the child of Zeus and Dikê, nor was he joking when he said the swans were his fellow-slaves.454 (7) The story is an allegorical way of saying that they have souls like ours, and the gods in anger changed them from humans to animals, but pitied and loved them when they were changed. Similar things are said about dolphins and halcyons and nightingales and swallows.455 17 Every one of the ancients who had the good fortune to be nurtured by animals boasts not so much of his ancestors as of those who reared him: one a she-wolf, another a deer, another a goat, another a bee, Semiramis pigeons, Cyrus a bitch, and a Thracian a swan whose name he took.456 (2) This is where the gods got their titles, ‘kid’ for Dionysos, ‘wolf ’ and ‘dolphin’ for Apollo, ‘horse’ for Poseidon and for Athena. Hekate is more ready to respond when invoked as bull, dog, lioness.457 (3) And if people call animals irrational as if to excuse themselves for eating animals offered in sacrifice, then the

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Scyths who feast on their fathers might say that their fathers are irrational.458 18 These arguments, and others which I shall report in turn while surveying what the ancients said,459 show that animals are rational; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals? (2) We shall not extend concern for justice as far as plants, because they appear to be quite incompatible with logos. Yet there too we are accustomed to make use of the fruits, but not to cut down the tree with the fruit, and we harvest grain and pulses when they are dried out and falling to the ground and dead, whereas no one would eat an animal that has died, except for fish, and those too we kill by violence.460 So there is great injustice here. (3) To begin with, as Plutarch461 also says, if our nature has need of some things and we make use of them, we should not therefore extend injustice to every length and against all [creatures]. Nature concedes and provides for harm inflicted, up to a point, on necessities (if indeed it is harm to take something from plants, even though they remain alive), but to destroy other [creatures] gratuitously and for pleasure is total savagery and injustice.462 (4) Abstinence from these has not disadvantaged us either for living or for living well. If we happened to need the murder of animals and the eating of flesh to live, as we need air and water, plants and crops, without which it is impossible to live, then nature would have a necessary involvement in this injustice. But if many priests of the gods, and many barbarian kings when purifying themselves,463 and innumerable species of animals that do not touch such food at all, live and achieve the fulfilment of their nature, how could it not be absurd for someone to tell us that if we are forced to war with some, we should not behave peacefully even to those with whom it is possible, but we must either live by not using justice towards anything, or use justice towards everything and not live?464 (5) Among humans, a man who takes someone’s property, or ravages a land or a city, for his own preservation or for his children or his country, has necessity as an excuse for his injustice; but someone who does these things for wealth or satiety or luxurious pleasures, to provide satisfaction for appetites which are not necessary, is held to be anti-social and uncontrolled and bad. Likewise, God pardons those who harm plants, use fire and spring water, shear and milk sheep, tame and yoke oxen, for their preservation and survival; but to subject animals to slaughter and butcher them when glutted with murder, not for food or to satisfy hunger but making pleasure and gluttony one’s aim – that is utterly unlawful and frightful.465 (6) It is enough that we make use of the toil and effort of animals that have no need to labour, ‘the matings of

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Book 3 horses and donkeys and the offspring of bulls’, as Aeschylus says, taming and yoking them ‘like slaves to take over our labours’.466 19 But when someone says we ought not to use an ox for relish,467 or destroy the breath of life to set out delicious things for repletion and refinements of the table, what does he take from our life that is either necessary for our preservation or good for our virtue? (2) On the other hand, the comparison of plants with animals is obviously forced. It is the nature of animals to have perceptions, to feel distress, to be afraid, to be hurt, and therefore to be injured.468 Plants have no perceptions, so nothing is alien or bad to them, nothing is harm or injustice:469 for perception is the origin of all appropriation and alienation, and the followers of Zeno make appropriation the origin of justice.470 (3) We see that many people live only by perception, having no intellect or logos, and that many surpass the most terrifying beasts in savagery and anger and aggression: they murder their children and kill their fathers, they are tyrants and agents of kings. How can it not be irrational to think that there is justice471 between us and these, but none between us and the ox that ploughs, the dog that lives with us, the creatures that feed us with milk and clothe us with fleece? How can it not be wholly contrary to reason?472 20 But that famous opinion of Chrysippus473 is, heaven knows, convincing: that the gods made us for themselves and for each other, and the animals for us; horses to campaign with us, dogs to hunt with us, leopards and bears and lions to exercise our courage. And the pig (for that is the most delightful of these favours) was born for nothing but to be sacrificed, and God added soul to its flesh like salt, to make it tasty for us. (2) So that we should have an abundance of sauces and side-dishes, God made all kinds of shellfish, purple-fish and seaanemones, and many varieties of birds, not from some other origin, but having reared them here as a large part of himself,474 surpassing nurses in giving treats and cramming the terrestrial region with pleasures and enjoyments. (3) If anyone does think there is something convincing, and fitting for God, in this, let him consider what he will reply to the argument advanced by Carneades:475 that everything nature brings into being benefits when it achieves the end for which it is naturally suited and came into being. ‘Benefit’ should be understood in its wider sense, for which the Stoics use ‘utility’.476 Now the pig is brought into being by nature to be slaughtered and devoured; so in experiencing this it achieves the end for which it is naturally suited, and it benefits. (4) Moreover, if God devised animals for the use of humans, what use shall we make of flies, mosquitoes, bats, dung-beetles, scorpions, vipers? Some are hideous to see and repellent to touch, their smell is unbearable, their calls are frightening and disagreeable; others are outright fatal to those that meet them. As for whales and saw-fish and the other sea-creatures which, as Homer

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says, ‘resounding Amphitrite nurtures in their thousands’,477 why did the creator not teach us in what way they are useful by nature? (5) If they say that not everything came into being for us and on account of us, then in addition to the great confusion and unclarity of the distinction, we still do not escape injustice, because we set upon and treat harmfully creatures which were born in accordance with nature like us, not for us. (6) I leave aside the point that if we define what is for us in terms of our need, we should instantly have to concede that we ourselves are born for the most deadly animals, such as crocodiles and whales and snakes. Nothing of theirs can be any kind of benefit to us, but they use people as food by seizing and killing those that fall in their way; and in this they do nothing more cruel than we do, with the difference that need and hunger drives them to this injustice, but we murder most animals out of aggression, or for luxury, or often for fun in theatres and hunting. (7) Such behaviour478 strengthens that in us which is murderous and bestial and impassive to pity, and the first people to venture such things eliminated most of our gentleness. But the Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity. Surely they did more to instigate justice than those who say that our habitual justice is destroyed by such conduct?479 Habit has a remarkable power to lead someone on by gradually making passions familiar.480 21 Yes, they say,481 but just as the immortal is the opposite of the mortal, the incorruptible of the corruptible, and the incorporeal of the body, so, since the rational exists, the irrational must exist as its opposite, for among so many pairs, this one alone cannot be left incomplete and mutilated – as if we did not agree, and did not demonstrate that the irrational is important in beings.482 (2) Indeed it is important and abundant in everything that lacks a soul, and we need no other antithesis to the rational; but everything inanimate, being irrational and without intellect, is thereby the opposite of that which has, together with soul, logos and thought. (3) If someone thinks that nature should not be mutilated, but that animate nature483 should have a rational and an irrational aspect, another will think that animate nature should have an aspect concerned with impression and an aspect without impression, and a sentient and a non-sentient aspect, so that nature should have these pairs, these antithetical conditions and deprivations, evenly balanced in each kind. But this is absurd.484 (4) If it is absurd to look for a sensing and a non-sentient aspect of an animate creature, and for an aspect that forms impressions and an aspect without impression, because every animate creature is ipso facto sentient and concerned with impression,485 it is also not plausible to require that an animate creature should have a rational and an irrational aspect – not when one is debating with people who think that nothing shares in perception

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Book 3 unless it also shares in understanding, and that there is no animal which does not have some opinion and reasoning power, just as it has by nature perception and impulse.486 (5) For nature, which as they rightly say does everything for a purpose and to an end, has not made the animal sentient so that it can simply experience and sense, but because there are many things appropriate to it and others alien to it, and it could not survive for a moment if it had not learned to guard against the latter and associate with the former. (6) So perception provides every creature with knowledge of both alike, and there is no way that the taking and pursuit of useful things, and rejection and avoidance of destructive and harmful things, which are consequent on perception, can be present in creatures which do not by nature reason and judge and remember and attend. (7) If you take from a creature expectation, memory, project, preparation, hope, fear, appetite, distress, neither eyes nor ears will be of use; it is better to be rid of all perception and impression that have nothing to use them, than to labour and grieve and suffer without the means of repelling such things. (8) There is, indeed, an argument of the scientist Strato which demonstrates that perception itself cannot occur at all without thinking.487 It often happens that letters we scan with our sight, or words that impinge on our hearing, escape us because our mind was on something else; then it returns and runs in pursuit of what has been said, retracing each word. So it has been said ‘mind sees, mind hears; all else is deaf and blind’,488 because what happens to eyes and ears does not produce perception if thinking is not present. (9) Hence the reply of king Cleomenes at a drinking-party when a performance was admired, and he was asked if he did not think it good: ‘You decide; my mind was on the Peloponnese.’489 So every creature that has perception must also have thought. 22 But let us suppose that perception does not need intellect to do its job. But when perception has made the animal aware of the difference between appropriate and alien and has gone away, what is it in them that now remembers and is afraid of painful things and longs for beneficial things and devises ways to make absent things present, and that prepares lairs and refuges and also traps for prey and escape-routes from attackers? (2) Even our opponents grind this out every time in their Introductions, defining a project as an indication of completion, a plan as impulse preceding impulse, preparation as action preceding action, memory as comprehension of a proposition in the past of which the present tense was comprehended by perception.490 There is none of these which is not rational, and all exist in all animals. The same must apply to thoughts, which they call ‘concepts’ when they are at rest and ‘movements of thought’ when they are in motion.491 (3) When they agree that all passions generally are bad judgements and beliefs, it is surprising that they overlook

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actions and movements in beasts, many from anger, many from fear, and, heaven knows, from envy and rivalry. They themselves punish dogs and horses which go wrong, not pointlessly but so as to correct them, making in them that distress caused by pain that we call repentance.492 (4) Pleasure that comes through the ears is called ‘enchantment’, pleasure that comes through the eyes is called ‘spellbinding’, and both are used on beasts. Deer and horses are charmed by pan-pipes and flutes, crabs are summoned from their holes when serenaded with pan-pipes, and they say that anchovies, when people sing, come up from the water and approach.493 (5) Some people foolishly say that animals are not pleased or angry or afraid, do not make preparations or remember, but that the bee ‘quasi-remembers’ and the swallow ‘quasi-prepares’ and the lion is ‘quasi-angry’ and the deer ‘quasi-afraid’. I do not know what they can reply to those who say that neither do they see or hear, but ‘quasi-see’ and ‘quasi-hear’, and do not speak but ‘quasi-speak’, and altogether do not live but ‘quasi-live’; for these assertions, as any sensible person would be convinced, are no more contrary to the obvious than the former are.494 (6) When I compare animal characters, lives, actions, lifestyles with those of humans, I see in them a great inadequacy, especially in that no animal has a manifest aim for, or progress in, or desire for, virtue, for which logos came into being; and I could not explain why nature gave the beginning to those who cannot reach the end. But even this does not seem absurd to our opponents.495 (7) They posit that affection for offspring is the beginning of society and justice in us, and they see that this affection in animals is great and powerful, but they deny animals a share in justice and do not think them worthy. Mules do not lack any of the reproductive organs: they have private parts and wombs and can use them with pleasure, but they cannot achieve the purpose of generation.496 (8) Look at it this way: is it not ridiculous to assert that even Socrates or Plato or Zeno carries no lighter a burden of vice than a common slave, but all alike are foolish and licentious and unjust,497 then to blame beasts for not being pure and perfected in relation to virtue, as if this were deprivation of reason, not inadequacy and weakness of reason? The more so when they acknowledge that vice is rational, for every beast is full of vice: we see that cowardice, unbridled desire, injustice and malice exist in many.498 23 Some people claim that a creature which is not naturally capable of rightness of logos is not capable even of logos. First, this is no different from claiming that a monkey does not by nature share in ugliness or a tortoise in slowness, because it is not capable of beauty or of speed. Second, they do not observe the difference which is before their eyes. For logos comes by nature, but authentic, complete logos comes from care and education.499 (2) So all animate creatures share in rationality, but our opponents cannot say that any human being,

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Book 3 however many there are, possesses rightness and wisdom.500 (3) Just as there is a difference in sight and in flight – grasshoppers do not see as falcons do, nor do partridges fly like eagles – so not every rational creature has the same share of that versatility and acuteness which can be consummate. There are in animals many illustrations of community and courage and ingenuity in relation to resources and their management, just as there are of their opposites, injustice and cowardice and stupidity. (4) That is why there are debates, some saying that land animals are more advanced, others sea creatures. It is obvious when hippopotami are compared with storks,501 for storks feed their fathers, hippopotami kill theirs so as to mount their mothers; and again when partridges are compared with pigeons. Male partridges get rid of the eggs and destroy them, because the female refuses to be mounted when she is brooding; male pigeons take their turn in looking after the eggs and warming them, and are the first to bring food for the chicks, and if the female wanders off for too long the male chases her back, pecking her, to the eggs and the chicks.502 (5) When Antipater charged donkeys and sheep with contempt for cleanliness, I don’t know how he overlooked lynxes and swallows. Lynxes go somewhere remote, hide their completely and dispose of it; swallows teach their young to turn to the outside [of the nest] to void their droppings.503 (6) Moreover, we do not say that one tree is more ignorant than another, as we say that a sheep is more ignorant than a dog; or that one vegetable is more cowardly than another, as we say that a deer is more cowardly than a lion. Just as among motionless things, one is not slower than another, and among voiceless things, one does not have a smaller voice than another, so among those that do not by nature have the capacity for thought, one is not more cowardly or more sluggish or more uncontrolled than another: it is this capacity, by being more or less present in different creatures, that has made the differences we see.504 (7) It is no wonder that humans are so different from animals in ability to learn, quickness of thought and all that concerns justice and community. Many animals too surpass all human beings, some in size and swiftness, others in strength of sight and keenness of hearing; but this does not mean that humans are deaf or blind or powerless. We run too, even if more slowly than deer, and we see, even if worse than falcons, and nature has not deprived us of strength and size, even if we are nothing in comparison with elephants and camels. (8) Similarly, let us not say that if beasts think more sluggishly and are worse at reflection, they do not reflect or think at all, or even have logos; but let us say that they have weak and turbid logos, like blurred and disturbed vision.505 24 If so much had not been collected and said by so many, we would adduce thousands of arguments to demonstrate the natural endowment of animals.506 (2) One more point should be considered: it seems

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that when any part or faculty has by nature a capacity for something, it is that same part or faculty which, when mutilated or diseased, lapses into a state contrary to nature. Thus blindness is a defect of the eye, lameness of the leg, stammering of the tongue, not of anything else. (3) There is no blindness in that which does not by nature see, no lameness in that which does not by nature walk, nor does stammering or voicelessness or lisping occur in those who have no tongue. Nor would you speak of someone’s being out of his mind, or out of his senses, or mad, unless he had by nature intelligence and thought and reasoning. It is not possible to be afflicted unless you have the faculty of which the loss, or mutilation, or some other impairment, is the affliction. (4) Now I507 have encountered rabid dogs, and even horses, and people say that cattle and foxes also go mad. But the example of dogs is enough, for it is undisputed, and it demonstrates that the animal has quite considerable logos and thought: rabies and madness is an affliction of this when it is disturbed and confused. (5) We do not see either their sight or their hearing altered, but the case is like that of a melancholic or delirious human being. It is absurd not to say that his intelligence and reasoning power and memory are displaced and damaged; indeed, common usage says of people who are out of their minds that they are not themselves, but have lost their wits. Just so, if someone thinks that rabid dogs do not recognise the faces dearest to them, and flee from their accustomed ways, not because their natural intelligence and reasoning and memory is confused and demented but because of some other affliction, then that person seems either to overlook the obvious or to understand what is happening but use it to quarrel with the truth. (6) Such, then, are the arguments Plutarch gives in several books to refute the Stoics and Peripatetics.508 25 Theophrastus509 used an argument like this. We say that those who are born from the same people, I mean the same father and mother, are related to each other by nature.510 We also reckon that descendants of the same ancestors are related to each other, and further that fellow-citizens are related by sharing in the land and in association with each other. We do not judge that fellow-citizens are naturally related to one another, even at that distance in time, by descent from the same ancestors, unless indeed the founders of the race were also their first ancestors or descended from the same ancestors. (2) Thus also we say, I think, that Greek is related and kin to Greek, barbarian to barbarian, all human beings to each other, for one of two reasons: either they have the same ancestors, or they have food, customs and race in common. (3) Thus also we posit that all human beings are kin to one another, and moreover to all the animals, for the principles of their bodies are naturally the same. I say this not with reference to the primal elements, for plants too are composed of

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Book 3 these: I mean, for instance, skin, flesh and the kind of fluids that are natural to animals.511 We posit this the more strongly because the souls of animals are no different, I mean in appetite and anger, and also in reasoning and above all in perception.512 Just as with bodies, so with souls: some animals have them brought to perfection, others less so, but the principles are naturally the same in all. The relatedness of passions also shows this.513 (4) If it is true that the origin of characteristics is like this, then all species have intelligence, but they differ in upbringing and in the mixture of their primary components.514 The race of other animals would then be related and kin to us in all respects, for all of them have the same foods and breath, as Euripides says, and ‘blood-red flows’, and show that the common parents of all are heaven and earth.515 26 So, since they are kin, if it appeared that they have also, as Pythagoras said, been allocated the same soul, someone who did not refrain from injustice towards relatives would justly be judged impious.516 (2) The relationship is not severed because some of them are savage: some human beings, no less and even more than these, do ill to their neighbour and are carried towards harming those they meet as if by some air-current of their individual nature and depravity.517 So we get rid of them, but we do not break off our connection with those that are civilised. (3) In the same way, if some animals too are savage, we should get rid of those animals because they are like that, just as we get rid of human beings who are like that, but we should not renounce our connection with the other, tamer animals. We should not eat either kind, any more than we should eat unjust human beings. (4) As it is, we commit great injustice both by killing tame animals as we do savage and unjust animals, and by eating the tame ones. We are unjust in both respects: because we kill them, though they are tame, and because we feast on them, and their death is solely with reference to food. (5) One might add arguments such as the following.518 When someone says that by extending justice as far as animals we destroy justice, he does not realise that he himself is not preserving justice, but increasing pleasure, which is the enemy of justice: at least, if pleasure is the goal, justice manifestly perishes.519 (6) Surely it is obvious that justice is increased by abstinence? One who abstains from all animate creatures, even those that do not make a social contract with him, will abstain all the more from harm to his own kind.520 The friend of the genus will not hate the species, but rather, inasmuch as the genus of animals is bigger, the more he will safeguard justice towards the part and towards that which is appropriate to him. (7) One who has achieved appropriation of animals will not injure any particular animal; but the one who restricts justice to human beings is ready, like someone in a tight place, to jettison abstinence from injustice.521 (8) In consequence, Pythagorean

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relish is sweeter than Socratic: for Socrates said that hunger is the relish for food, but Pythagoras said that the relish is injuring no one and seasoning with justice.522 Flight from animate food is flight from unjust acts concerned with food. (9) The god did not make it impossible for us to save ourselves without injuring others, for that would be to give us a nature which was the origin of injustice.523 And indeed those who have thought to derive justice from appropriation of human beings have, it seems, failed to recognise the particular character of justice: for that would be a kind of philanthropy, whereas justice lies in restraint and harmlessness towards everything that does not do harm.524 This is how the just man thinks, not that other way; so justice, since it lies in harmlessness, extends as far as animate beings. (10) That is why the essence of justice is that the rational rules over the irrational, and the irrational follows.525 For when the rational rules and the irrational follows, it is absolutely necessary for a human being to be harmless towards anything whatever. When the passions have been abased and appetite and anger have withered, and the rational part exercises the rule which is appropriate for it, assimilation to the Greater follows at once.526 (11) The Greater in the universe is altogether harmless, and itself by its power safeguards all, does good to all, and lacks nothing; whereas we are harmless to all by being just, but by being mortal we lack necessities. (12) But taking necessities does not harm plants, when we take what they let fall, or crops, when we make use of crops from dead plants, or sheep, when we shall rather benefit them by shearing them and shall share their milk while providing them with our care.527 (13) For this reason the just man seems to disadvantage himself in bodily concerns, yet does himself no injustice: for by tutelage528 and control of the body he will increase his inner good, that is his assimilation to the god. 27 True justice is not safeguarded either when pleasure is the end, or when the primary goods in accordance with nature make up the sum of happiness or at least are all on offer.529 In most people, the movements and the needs of irrational nature are the beginning of injustice. For example, they need to eat animals, so they say, to keep nature free from distress and not lacking what it desires.530 But when the end is the utmost possible assimilation to the god, harmlessness is safeguarded in all cases. (2) A man who is led by passions and is harmless only to his children and his wife, but contemptuous and aggressive towards others, is aroused and dazzled by mortal things because the irrational dominates in him. In the same way, the man who is led by reason maintains harmlessness towards fellow-citizens too, and further still towards strangers and all human beings; he keeps irrationality subjected, and is more rational than those others and thereby also more godlike. Thus someone who does not restrict harmlessness to human beings, but extends it also to the other

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Book 3 animals, is more like the god; and if extension to plants is possible, he preserves the image even more.531 (3) But if it is not possible, and the defect of our nature is there, there is what the ancients lamented: from strife like this, and quarrels, we are born532 namely that we cannot keep the divine untouched and harmless in relation to everything, for we are not without needs in relation to everything. (4) The cause is generation and our being born in poverty, resource having trickled away. Poverty got its preservation, and the world from which it acquired existence, from things that are not its own. So whoever needs more from outside is riveted the more firmly to poverty, and the more he needs more, the more he has no share in the god but is wedded to poverty.533 (5) That which is like the god has true riches by that very assimilation. No one who is rich and needs nothing commits injustice: for so long as he commits injustice, even if he has every possession and every acre of land, he is poor because he was always wedded to poverty, and for that reason is unjust, an atheist, impious, and liable to all badness, for badness was brought into existence, as a privation of good, by the fall of the soul into matter.534 (6) So everything is meaningless so long as we are astray from our origin, and we lack everything so long as we do not look to Resource, but yield to the mortal element of our nature for as long as we have not recognised our true self.535 Injustice is very clever at persuading itself and at corrupting those subject to it, because its association with its nurslings is accompanied by pleasure. (7) Just as in choosing a way of life, someone who has experience of both ways is a better judge than someone who has experience only of one, so in the choices and avoidances to do with proper conduct, the person who judges from a position of vantage is a surer judge, even of that which is less, than the person who judges from below what lies before him.536 So the man who lives in accordance with intellect discerns more clearly what should be chosen and what should not than the man who lives in accordance with unreason: for the first man has also passed through unreason because he has associated with it from the outset, but the second, having no experience of the concerns of intellect, persuades those like him – a child talking nonsense to children. (8) But, people say, if everyone was convinced by these arguments, what will become of us? Obviously, we shall be happy, when injustice has been expelled from the human race and justice is a fellow-citizen among us too, as in heaven.537 (9) Now, it is as if the Danaids were at a loss to know how they will live when they have escaped from their servitude of filling a leaky jar with a sieve. People are at a loss to know what will happen to us, if we stop bringing to our passions and appetites offerings which in their entirety trickle away through

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Translation inexperience of good, because we acquiesce in a life based on necessities and lived for necessities.538 (10) ‘What then shall we do?’ you ask, O man? We shall imitate the race of gold, we shall imitate those who have been liberated. Aidôs and Nemesis and Dikê associated with the golden race because they were satisfied with the fruits of the earth, fruits that for them the corn-giving earth bore of itself in abundance.539

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Those who have been liberated provide for themselves what once they provided in service to their masters. (11) In the same way you too, freed from the slavery of the body and from servitude to bodily passions, as you nourished them in every way with foods from outside shall nourish yourself in every way with foods from within, justly recovering your own and no longer taking by force what belongs to others.540 BOOK 4

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1 I have rebutted, Castricius, in what has been said, almost all the pretexts of those who advocate meat-eating. They are really motivated by lack of control and licentiousness, but have provided themselves with a shameless defence based on need, ascribing to nature a greater need than they should.541 (2) Some specific questions remain. The promise of advantage, in particular, deludes those corrupted by pleasure; moreover, testimony that neither any of the sages nor any people has refused to eat meat is enough to lead hearers into extremes of injustice, because they are unfamiliar with true reports. I intend, then, to criticise these arguments, and shall try to produce solutions to the argument on advantage and to the other questions.542 2 Let us begin with abstinence from some things, people by people: the Greeks, as the most closely related to us among the witnesses, shall lead off. Among those who have concisely and exactly compiled accounts of Greek customs is Dicaearchus the Peripatetic.543 Expounding the ancient way of life of Greece, he says that the ancients were born close to the gods: they were best in nature and lived the best kind of life, so as to be reckoned a race of gold in comparison with those of the present day who are made from base and valueless matter; and they killed no animate being.544 (2) The poets, he says, offered this in evidence when they named them the golden race: they said that all good things were for them; the corn-giving earth bore fruit of itself in abundance, and they in gladness and quiet managed their fields, with many goods around.545

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Book 4 (3) Commenting on this, Dicaearchus says that was what life in the age of Kronos was like, if we are to accept that it happened and is not just a pointless story, but to reject the unduly mythical and reduce it to natural principle based on reason.546 Everything grew spontaneously: that is reasonable, because people were making no provision at all, as they did not yet have the art of farming or any other. (4) This was also the reason why they had leisure and spent their time without effort and anxiety,547 and also, if we must accept the thought of the most subtle doctors, without illness. Among the doctors’ precepts, you could find none more important for health than not to make residues: and they kept their bodies pure from these at all times. They ate no food which was too strong for their nature to digest, but food with which their nature could cope; they took no more than a moderate amount, because of availability, and usually less than was sufficient, because of scarcity.548 (5) Moreover, they did not have wars or civil strife with one another, for there was no prize to be won which was worth anyone’s making so great a divide. So the leading characteristics of their life were leisure, a relaxed attitude to needs, health, peace, friendship. (6) To those who came later, who had great desires and were beset by many evils, that way of life reasonably became an object of longing. The later saying ‘enough of acorns’ demonstrates the simplicity of the first people and the frugality of their food: presumably it was said by the first person to change the diet.549 (7) Later the pastoral way of life came in, and in this people were already surrounding themselves with excess possessions and laying hands on animals,550 having realised that some did no damage, but others were harmful and fierce. So they tamed the first and attacked the second; and together with this way of life war arose. These things, Dicaearchus says, were said not by me, but by those who have researched and expounded ancient history.551 (8) For now there were worthwhile possessions in existence, and one side competed to carry them off, gathering together and urging each other on, and the other side competed to protect them. So as time went on like this, and they were always coming to understand, little by little, what counts as useful, they reached the third, agricultural, form of life.552 (9) That is what Dicaearchus says in his account of the ancient history of the Greeks and his exposition of the blessed life of the most ancient people; and abstinence from animate creatures was a major contribution to it. For that reason there was no war, because injustice had been expelled: war, and aggression towards each other, came in later, at the same time as injustice towards animals. So I am astonished at those who venture to say that abstinence from animals is the mother of injustice, when research and experience tell us that luxury, war and injustice came in together with the slaughter of animals.553 3 Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian realised this later, and although

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the practice of eating animate creatures was prevalent, he organised society so that there would be the least possible need for such food.554 He defined the lot assigned to each, not by herds of cattle and sheep, goats and horses, or by abundance of possessions, but by the ownership of land bearing seventy bushels of barley for a man, twelve for a woman, and comparable amounts of fresh produce.555 (2) He thought this much food would suffice for adequate strength and health, and that they would need nothing else. That is why, they say, later he was going through the country after travel abroad, and, seeing the land newly harvested and the cornfields aligned and regular, he smiled, and said to those with him that all Laconia looked as if it had been newly divided up among many brothers. (3) So it was possible for him, having expelled luxury from Sparta,556 to invalidate all gold and silver currency and use only iron, and iron which had only a low value for a large weight and bulk, so that for the equivalent of ten minae you would need a large storeroom in the house and a team to carry it. (4) When this was ratified, many kinds of wrongdoing were banished from Lacedaemon. For who was going to steal or take bribes or embezzle or seize what could not be hidden, was not an enviable possession, and could not even be coined with profit?557 (5) Useless crafts, too, were to be expelled with these, having no outlet for their works. Iron could not be transported to other Greeks, and it was derided and had no value, so there was no way of buying anything foreign or trashy. No trading vessel sailed into the harbours, no professional speaker came into Laconia, no vagrant prophet, no pimp, no maker of gold or bronze ornaments, because there was no currency.558 (6) So luxury, gradually isolated from that which kindled and sustained it, faded away of itself, and those who had many possessions got no advantage, because there was no way for prosperity to appear in public, but it was shut in the house and inert. (7) So ordinary belongings, and necessary furniture like beds and chairs and tables, were very well made among them; and according to Critias,559 the Laconian drinking-cup was particularly well thought of for use on campaign. Its colour concealed from sight the unpleasant appearance of water that is drunk of necessity, and its rim blocked and held back the mud so that the liquid reached the mouth in a purer state. (8) The legislator, as Plutarch says, was responsible even for these, for the craftsmen, rid of useless tasks, displayed their accomplishment in the necessities of life. 4 Having decided to make a further attack on luxury and to eliminate envy of wealth, he brought in his third and best political measure, the establishment of common meals, so that people came together to dine on fixed rations of grain and side-dishes which were common to all; they did not eat their meal at home, reclining on expensive couches with tables, being fattened in the dark, like an

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Book 4 animal delicacy, at the hands of craftsmen and cooks, and destroying their bodies together with their characters by yielding them to every appetite and to a surfeit which requires long sleeps, hot baths, much rest and a kind of daily sick-nursing. (2) This was a great thing, but greater than this was making riches unenvied, as Theophrastus says,560 and achieving absence of riches by common meals and frugal diet. There was neither use nor enjoyment, not even sight or display, of lavish provision, for the rich came to the same dinner as the poor. (3) So only in Sparta can Wealth be seen blind, as in the proverb, lying inanimate and immobile like a picture. (4) Nor was it possible to eat first at home and go to the common meal already full, for the others kept careful watch for the man who did not drink or eat with them and blamed him for lack of control and being too delicate for the common diet.561 (5) They called these meals phiditia, either because they were the causes of friendship [philia] and benevolence, with the letter d in place of l, or because they accustomed people to frugality and thrift [pheidô].562 (6) They met in groups of about fifteen, or a few more or less. Each of the fellow-diners brought per month a bushel of barley-grains, eight jugs of wine, five minae of cheese, two and a half minae of figs, and also a very little money for extras.563 5 Reasonably, then, the sons of those who dined so simply and temperately also went to the messes, taken there as if to schools for temperance: they heard political discussions and saw the culture of free men,564 and learned to have fun and make jokes without vulgarity and not to be annoyed when the joke was on them. Putting up with teasing seems also to have been a very Laconian characteristic; but someone who did not like it could decline, and the person who was making fun would stop.565 (2) Such was the simplicity of the Lacedaemonians with regard to lifestyle, even though the laws were made for the masses.566 That is why those who came from this society were, according to tradition, braver and more temperate and more concerned for the right than those who came from other societies and who were corrupted in soul and body. It is clear that complete abstinence is appropriate to such a society, whereas [meat-]eating567 is appropriate to corrupt societies. (3) As we pass on to the other peoples who were concerned for good order, civilised behaviour and piety towards the divine, it will be clear that for the security and advantage of the cities, rules of abstinence were prescribed if not for all, at least for some:568 those who sacrificed to the gods on behalf of the city and by their service propitiated them for the sins of the many. (4) What is done in the mysteries by the ‘child from the hearth’, who propitiates the divine, on behalf of all those undergoing initiation, by correctly performing what is prescribed, can be done for peoples and cities by priests sacrificing on behalf of all and by their piety bringing the divine to care for them.569 (5) Some priests are required to abstain

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from eating any animal, some to abstain at least from eating some kinds of animal. This applies whether you consider Greek or barbarian custom, but different peoples have different restrictions; so that if you consider them all together, it will be apparent that those taken from all regions abstain from all animals. (6) Now if those who preside over the security of cities, and who are entrusted with their reverence towards the gods, abstain from animals, how could anyone venture to accuse abstinence of being disadvantageous for cities?570 6 Chaeremon the Stoic, in his account of Egyptian priests who are, he says, regarded as philosophers by the Egyptians, explains that they have chosen temples as a place for engaging in philosophy.571 (2) Living beside the shrines of the gods was akin to their whole desire for contemplation. It provided them with safety, because everyone, out of reverence for the gods, honoured philosophers as if they were a kind of sacred animal; and it also allowed them to be undisturbed, because contact with other people occurs only at festivals and feasts, but otherwise the temples are almost forbidden ground to others, for they had to approach in a state of purity and of abstinence from many things.572 This is a kind of common ordinance of the temples of Egypt. (3) The priests, having renounced all other occupation and human labour, devoted their whole life to contemplation and vision of things divine.573 By vision they achieve honour, safety and piety, by contemplation knowledge, and through both a discipline574 of lifestyle which is secret and has the dignity of antiquity. (4) Living always with divine knowledge and inspiration puts one beyond all greed, restrains the passions, and makes life575 alert for understanding. They practised simplicity, restraint, self-control, perseverance and in everything justice and absence of greed. (5) Their resistance to social contact also made them revered: at the time of what they called ‘holiness’, they did not associate with their closest kin and compatriots, and were hardly even seen by anyone else, except, for necessities, by those who were also engaged in holiness, because they lived in enclosures which were inaccessible to those who were not pure, and which were sacred to holy rites.576 (6) At other times they associated more freely with their fellows, but they did not share their lives with anyone outside the cult. They were always to be seen close to the gods or to their images, either carrying them or processing before them or arranging them with order and reverence: none of these rites was empty display, but each was an indication of some natural principle.577 (7) Their behaviour also showed them to be reverend. Their walk was disciplined, and they practised controlling their gaze, so that if they chose they did not blink. Their laughter was rare, and if it did happen, did not go beyond a smile. They kept their hands always within their clothing.578 Each had a visible sign of the rank he had in the rites, for there were several ranks. (8) Their lifestyle was frugal

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Book 4 and simple. Some tasted no wine at all, others a very little: they accused it of causing damage to the nerves and a fullness in the head which impedes research, and of producing desire for sex. (9) In the same way they also treated other foods with caution, and in their times of holiness did not eat bread at all. When they were not in a state of holiness they ate it with chopped hyssop, for they said that hyssop eliminated most of the force of bread.579 Some of them abstained from oil most of the time, but the majority did so entirely. If they used it with vegetables, it was only a very little, just enough to make the taste milder. 7 It was not lawful for them to touch food or drink produced outside Egypt, and thereby a great area of luxury was closed to them.580 (2) They abstained from all fish found in Egypt itself, and from quadrupeds that have solid hooves or hooves with fissures or have no horns, and from all birds that eat flesh. Many abstained altogether from animate foods, and all of them did in times of holiness, when they did not even eat eggs.581 (3) They also refused some of the animals which had not been declared unfit: for instance, they refused female cattle, and also males that were twins, spotted, varied in colour, deformed in shape or accustomed to the yoke (because they were already consecrated by their labours) or resembled sacred cattle (whatever kind of similarity appeared) or one-eyed or suggesting some resemblance to humans. (4) There are thousands of other observations in the art of those called moskhosphragistai:582 these have led to booklength compilations. Their precautions about birds are even more extreme: for instance, not to eat turtle-doves, because, they say, a falcon that has caught one often lets it go alive, granting survival as a reward for intercourse. So, in case they unwittingly come upon such a dove, they avoid the entire species.583 (5) Some of their religious rites are common to all, but differ according to the kinds of priest and are appropriate to each god; but times of holiness cleanse them all. (6) This is the time when they are to carry out some religious ritual and abstain for a certain number of days in advance (some for forty-two, some for more or less, but never less than seven) from every animate creature, from all vegetables and pulses, and especially from sexual intercourse with women; they have none with males even at other times.584 (7) Three times each day they bathe in cold water, when they get up, before their meal and on their way to sleep. If they happen to have a seminal emission, they immediately purify the body by washing. They also wash in cold water at other periods of their lives, but not so often. (8) Their bed is woven from palm-branches, which they call ‘bais’, and a well-polished half-cylinder of wood supports the head. They practised thirst, hunger and eating little throughout their lives. 8 It is evidence of their self-control that, without taking walks or using passive exercise,585 they remained free from illness and vigor-

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ous in comparison with average strength: at least, in the course of the rituals they undertook many heavy tasks and forms of service which are too much for everyday strength. (2) They divided the night into times for observation of the heavens, and sometimes for religious observance, and the day into times for worship of the gods: they sang hymns to the gods three or four times, at dawn and evening, when the sun is at noon and when it is setting.586 For the rest of the time they were engaged in the study of arithmetic or geometry, always working at it and adding to their discoveries, and altogether committed to practising it. (3) They did the same even on winter nights, staying awake for love of scholarship, for they gave no thought to making a profit and were liberated from the bad master, Extravagance. This unwearying and consistent work testifies to the perseverance of the men, and the lack of appetites testifies to their self-control. (4) They reckoned that sailing away from Egypt was one of the most impious acts, because they were always wary of foreign luxury and customs. They thought it holy only for those who were obliged to do so on the king’s service, and even those laid great stress on abiding by ancestral custom: if they were discovered to have transgressed even in a minor matter, they were expelled.587 (5) True philosophy was practised by prophets, hierostolistai and hierogrammateis, and also hôrologoi. The other priests and pastophoroi, and the mass of neôkoroi and servants of the gods, observed the same rules of purity, but without the same strictness and self-control.588 9 Such is the testimony about the Egyptians given by a truth-loving and accurate man who was deeply engaged in the practice of Stoic philosophy.589 Starting from this discipline, and from their appropriation to the divine, they realised that divinity is present not only in human beings, nor does soul dwell only in humans upon the earth, but it is almost the same soul which is present in all animals.590 (2) For this reason they used every animal to represent the gods,591 and combined, in a kind of equality, beasts and humans, and also the bodies of birds and of humans, sometimes below and sometimes on top; for they have images which are human in form up to the neck, but with the face of a bird or a lion or of some other animal, or alternatively the head may be human and the rest of the body from other animals.592 (3) In this way they show that, according to the plan of the gods, these creatures too are in community with one another, and that both tame and wild beasts are our foster-brothers,593 not without some divine intent. (4) That is why the lion is worshipped like a god, and one region of Egypt (they call it a nome) has the name Leontopolites, another Bouseirites, another Kynopolites and another Lykopolites.594 They worshipped the divine power which is over everything through the associated animals that each god provided.595 (5) Among the elements, water and fire are the most honoured

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Book 4 because they are the most responsible for our security; and this too they show in the rites, for even now, when [the temple of] holy Sarapis is opened, worship takes place with fire and water, and the hymnsinger makes a libation of the water and displays the fire when, standing on the threshold, he awakens the god in the ancestral speech of the Egyptians.596 (6) These, then, they reverence, and most revered are those that share more in the sacred rites:597 this includes all animals, for in the village of Anabis they also reverence a human being, and a sacrifice is made to him there and offerings are burned on the altar. He is supposed to eat, soon after, what is prepared specially for him as a human being. So people should abstain from other animals just as they should from the human.598 (7) Moreover, from their exceptional wisdom and close association599 with the divine, they understood that certain animals are dearer to some of the gods than humans are, as the falcon is to the Sun because it is formed entirely from blood and breath; it pities humans, laments over a corpse and scatters earth on its eyes, in which, they believe, the sunlight dwells. They understand also that it lives for many years, and after its lifetime has a power of divination and, when freed from the body, is most rational and most precognitive, and also sanctifies images and dwells in temples.600 (8) The scarab might be repulsive to an ignorant person without knowledge of divine matters, but the Egyptians reverenced it as an animate image of the sun. Every scarab is male: it releases semen in mud, makes the mud into a ball and pushes it backwards with its hind legs as the sun does the sky, taking a lunar cycle of twenty-eight days.601 (9) They also have philosophic interpretations of the ram, and of the crocodile, the vulture, the ibis and indeed of every animal, so it is from intelligence and great wisdom about the gods that they have come to reverence for animals.602 (10) An ignorant person would not even suspect that they have not been carried away by the general opinion which knows nothing, and do not themselves walk in the ways of stupidity, but that they have passed beyond the ignorance of the multitude which everyone encounters first, and have found worthy of veneration that which to the multitude is worthless.603 10 They had another reason, no less important than those mentioned, for believing in reverence towards animals.604 They understood that the soul of every animal, when released from the body, is rational, precognitive of the future, oracular, and able to do everything that a human can when liberated.605 So, with good reason, they respected them, and abstained from them so far as it is possible. (2) To explain why the Egyptians reverence the gods through animals would require a long exposition which would go beyond the present concern; what has been said about them will suffice. (3) But this point should not be omitted: when they embalm the dead of well-born

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families, they draw out the entrails separately and put them in a box, and during the other rites they perform for the corpse, they take hold of the box and call the sun to witness, one of the embalmers speaking on behalf of the corpse. (4) He says something like this, as Euphantos606 translated it from the language of his homeland: ‘O Lord Sun and all the gods who give life to humans, receive me and present me to the eternal gods to reside with them. The gods of whom my parents told me I have reverenced for all the time I lived under their rule, and I have always honoured those who begot my body. I have neither killed any other human being, nor stolen from any what he had entrusted to me, nor done any other unpardonable act. (5) And if during my life I have been at fault by eating or drinking something forbidden, I did not do it myself, but through these’, showing the box which contains the belly. Having said this he throws it into the river, and embalms the rest of the body as being pure. In this way they thought that a speech for the defence was owed to the divinity about what they had eaten and drunk, and on account of this violence should be done.607 11 Among those known to us, the Jews – before they suffered intolerable outrage to their traditions first from Antiochus and then from the Romans, when the temple in Jerusalem was captured and became open to all to whom it had been forbidden, and the city itself was destroyed – consistently abstained from many animals, and in particular, even now, from the meat of pigs.608 (2) There were three kinds of philosophy among them: the Pharisees were in charge of the first, the Sadducees of the second, and the Essenes of the third, which was thought to be the most venerable.609 The organisation of the third group was as follows, as Josephus described it in several places in his works: book two of the Jewish History which he completed in seven books, book eighteen of the Antiquities which he wrote in twenty books, and book two of Against the Greeks which has two books.610 (3) The Essenes, then, are Jews by race, but keep themselves to themselves more than the rest. They shun pleasures as vice, and they regard self-control and not succumbing to passions as virtue. (4) They disdain marriage, but they adopt the children of others while they are still pliable enough to be taught, count them as kin and mould them to their customs. They do not want to abolish marriage and the succession which comes from it, but they guard against the wantonness of women.611 (5) They despise wealth, and the community of goods among them is remarkable: you cannot find one who surpasses the others in possessions. The rule is that those who enter the sect make over their property to the order, so that among them all there appears neither degrading poverty nor excessive wealth, but the possessions of each are combined and are a single estate for all, as if for brothers. (6) They regard oil as an impurity, and if one involun-

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Book 4 tarily gets oil on himself, he wipes his body; for they think it good to have dry skin and always to wear white.612 (7) The administrators of the common property are elected by show of hands, and those who do various tasks are chosen from all without distinction.613 They do not have one city, but in every city many are resident. Everything they have is open to members of the sect coming from elsewhere, and those seeing them for the first time enter as if to familiar friends. For this reason, when they are travelling, they take nothing for expenses.614 (8) They do not change their clothes or shoes until they are altogether in tatters or worn out. Nor do they buy or sell anything: each one gives what he has to the one who needs it, and receives in exchange what the other has that is useful. They are not forbidden to take from whoever they choose even without giving in return. 12 They are pious towards the divine in their own way. Before the sun rises they speak no profane word, but address ancestral prayers to the sun, as if supplicating it to rise.615 (2) After this they are dismissed by the administrators to whatever craft each one has, and they work sustainedly until the fifth hour. Then they reassemble in one place, gird themselves with linen cloths and wash their bodies in cold water, and after this purification they assemble in a private room where those of different beliefs are not allowed to enter. Pure themselves, they come into this dining-room as if into some sacred precinct. (3) They sit down in silence, then the baker puts loaves before them in order, and the cook gives each man one bowl of one foodstuff. The priest makes a preliminary prayer over this pure and holy food, and it is not lawful for anyone to eat before the prayer.616 When he has eaten he prays again, and they honour God as they begin and as they finish. (4) Then they put aside their clothing as something sacred, and go back to their work until evening. They return in the same way for dinner, seating with them any guests who happen to be present. (5) No outcry or uproar ever defiles the house, but they defer to each other and speak in order, and the silence inside appears to those from outside as an awe-inspiring mystery. The cause of this is their constant sobriety and the measuring-out of food and drink so that they have just enough.617 (6) For those who are aspirants to the sect, entry is not immediate, but they remain outside for a year and are required to follow the same rule of life; they are given a small hatchet, a loincloth and white clothing. (7) When a man has given proof of self-control for this time, he follows the rule of life more closely and takes a purer share in the waters of purification, but he does not yet partake in the communal life.618 After he has demonstrated perseverance, they test his character for another two years, and when he is seen to be worthy he is admitted to the group. 13 Before touching the common food, he swears awesome oaths to them: first to show piety to the divine, then to maintain justice

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towards people and not to hurt anyone by choice or under orders, but always to hate the unjust and fight in support of the just, and to be trustworthy towards all but especially to those in power, for without God no one achieves power. (2) If he should himself be in power, never to abuse his authority, nor to outshine his subjects in clothing or in greater adornment, and always to love the truth and reject liars; to keep his hands pure from theft and his soul from unholy gain, and not to hide anything from his fellow-sectarians nor to reveal anything of theirs to others, even if he is tortured to death. (3) In addition, he swears not to share the teachings with anyone in another way than he himself received them; to abstain from brigandage; and to safeguard the books of their sect equally with the names of the angels.619 (4) Such are the oaths. Those who are found guilty and expelled perish wretchedly, for, being bound by the oaths and customs, they cannot even share food provided by others, so they eat herbs and die of starvation.620 For this reason the Essenes have taken many back, in pity, when they were in desperate straits, thinking they have paid a sufficient penalty for their faults in suffering torture which had brought them to death’s door.621 (5) They give a shovel to the future sectarians, for they do not relieve themselves without digging a pit a foot deep and wrapping themselves round with their cloak, so as not to affront the rays of the god. The simplicity and frugality of their diet is such that they do not need to evacuate on the Sabbath, which they keep for hymns to the god and for rest.622 (6) From this discipline they achieve such great endurance that even when racked and wrenched and burned and proceeding through all the instruments of torture, to make them curse their lawgiver or eat one of the foods they do not eat, they will agree to neither.623 (7) They demonstrated this in the war with the Romans, when they would not grovel to their torturers or shed tears, but smiled in the midst of pain and mocked those who applied the tortures, and cheerfully let go their souls in the expectation of receiving them again. (8) For this belief is strong among them: bodies are corruptible, and their matter does not endure, but souls remain always immortal. Souls come from the subtlest ether, drawn down by a natural attraction, to be interwoven with bodies. When they are released from the fetters of the flesh, as if liberated from long slavery, they rejoice and soar upwards.624 (9) From such a lifestyle and discipline aimed at truth and piety, there are, reasonably, many among them who can foretell the future, having (so to speak) exercised themselves on the sacred books and the various purifications and the utterances of the prophets. It is rare for them to miss the mark in their predictions.625 (10) Such, then, is the order of the Essenes among the Jews. 14 All [Jews] are forbidden to eat pig or fish without scales (the kind that the Greeks call cartilaginous) or the meat of animals with

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Book 4 solid hooves.626 (2) It is also forbidden to kill creatures which are suppliants and, so to speak, take refuge in houses, to say nothing of eating them. The lawgiver did not allow parents to be killed with their nestlings, and required that even in enemy territory the animals which work with humans should be spared and not slaughtered.627 (3) He was not afraid that the kind of animals which are not sacrificed would increase and cause famine among humans, for he knew first that animals which are prolific are also short-lived, second that many die without human care, and indeed that there are other animals which attack those that multiply. A proof of this is that there are many creatures from which we abstain, such as lizards, worms, mice, snakes, dogs, yet there is no fear that because of our abstinence we shall perish from famine as they multiply. (4) Besides, eating is not the same thing as killing, and though we kill many of these creatures we do not eat any.628 15 History relates that the Syrians too,629 in ancient times, abstained from animals and therefore did not sacrifice them to the gods; later they sacrificed to avert evils, but themselves absolutely did not eat meat. As time went on, according to Neanthes of Kyzikos and Asklepiades of Cyprus, in the reign of Pygmalion who was Phoenician by race and king of Cyprus, meat-eating was introduced because of the following transgression.630 (2) This is what Asklepiades says in his Cyprus and Phoenicia. ‘At first no animate creature was sacrificed to the gods, and there was no law about this because it was prohibited by the law of nature. The story they tell is that because of some crisis they first sacrificed a victim, asking for a life in exchange for a life; then, when it had happened, they burned the sacrifice entirely. (3) On some later occasion, when the sacrifice was in flames, some meat fell on the ground. The priest picked it up and burned himself, and unthinkingly put his fingers to his mouth to soothe the burn. Having tasted the roasted fat, he wanted it and did not abstain, but also gave some to his wife. (4) When Pygmalion found out, he had the priest and his wife thrown from a cliff, and gave the priesthood to another; and he, not long after, happened to make the same sacrifice and, because he had eaten the same meat, suffered the same fate as the other. The matter went further: people made sacrifices, and because of their desire did not abstain but ate the flesh, so Pygmalion ceased to punish them.’ (5) But abstinence from fish continued until the time of the comic poet Menander, who says Take the Syrians as example: When they eat fish, through loss of self-control, Their feet and belly swell; and then they wear Sackcloth, and sitting by the road in dirt, Appease the goddess by their degradation.631

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16 Among the Persians, those who are wise about the divine and serve it are called Magi, for that is what ‘magos’ means in the native language.632 These people are regarded as so great and reverend a race by the Persians that Darius son of Hystaspes had written on his tomb, in addition to the rest, that he was a teacher of the wisdom of the magi.633 (2) They are divided into three groups, according to Euboulos who wrote an investigation of Mithras in several books.634 The first and most learned neither eat nor kill any animate creature, but abide by the ancient abstinence from animals.635 The second group make use of animals, but do not kill any of the tame animals; and even the third group, like the others, do not eat all animals. For it is the belief of them all that metempsychosis is of the first importance, and this, apparently, they reveal in the mysteries of Mithras.636 (3) They symbolise our community with animals by giving us the names of animals: thus initiates who take part in their rites are called lions, and women hyenas, and servants ravens. In the case of the Fathers [lacuna] for they call them eagles and falcons. The man who attains leonine rank puts on all kinds of animal forms.637 (4) Pallas, giving the reason for this in his books on Mithras, says the general opinion is that it has to do with the [lacuna] of the circuit of the Zodiac, but that the true and correct explanation is an allegory of human souls, which, they say, put on all kinds of bodies;638 (5) indeed, some Latins are called, in their own language, boars and scorpions and bears and thrushes.639 They also give the demiurgic gods such names: they call Artemis she-wolf; the Sun lizard, lion, snake, falcon; Hekate horse, bull, lioness, dog.640 Most theologians say that Pherephatta is so called because she feeds [pherbei] the ring-dove [phatta], for the ring-dove is sacred to her. (6) That is why the priestesses of Maia offer it to her. Maia is the same as Persephone, in that she is nurse and nurturer, for she is an earth-goddess and Demeter is the same. They also consecrated the cock to her.641 That is why her initiates abstain from household birds. It is also a rule at Eleusis to abstain from domestic fowls, from fish, and from beans, pomegranates and apples; and pollution is incurred equally by coming into contact with childbed or with animals that have died.642 (7) Someone who has investigated the nature of apparitions knows the reason why one must abstain from all birds, especially when one is eager to be freed from earthly things and to be established with the heavenly gods.643 (8) But vice, as we have often said, is capable of defending her own case, especially when she makes her speech to an ignorant audience. For this reason people who are averagely bad think that a plea such as this one is empty words, ‘old wives’ tales’ as the saying is, and others think it is superstition. Those who have made progress in their wickedness are ready not only to speak ill of people who give such advice and instruction, but even to accuse a pure person of sorcery and conceit.

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Book 4 (9) But they are paying gods and men in full for their faults, and they have first paid an adequate penalty by having the disposition they do. We shall mention one more example from other tribes, that of a people who are famous, just, and believed to be pious towards the gods; then we shall pass to other things. 17 Indian society is divided into several kinds, and among them is a race of those wise about the gods, whom the Greeks habitually call ‘gymnosophists’. Of these there are two sects, one led by the Brahmans and one by the Samaneans.644 The Brahmans inherit this wisdom about the gods by descent, as if it were a priesthood, whereas the Samaneans are selected and their number is made up from those who have chosen to be wise about the gods. (2) Their practices are like this, according to the writings of Bardesanes, a Babylonian who lived in our fathers’ time and met the Indian embassy sent with Dandanis to the Emperor.645 (3) All the Brahmans are of one family, all tracing their descent from one father and one mother. The Samaneans are not of the same family, but are gathered, as I said, from all the people of India. (4) No Brahman is ruled by a king or pays any tax to others. Of their philosophers, some live on the mountains, others by the river Ganges. The mountain-dwellers eat fruit and cows’ milk curdled with herbs, and those by the Ganges live on fruit, which grows in abundance along the river. (5) The earth is almost always bearing some new crop, and also rice which grows abundantly and of itself, which they eat when fruit is in short supply. To eat other food, or even to touch animate food, is thought equivalent to the utmost impurity and impiety. This belief is revealed to them in their worship of the divine and their piety towards it.646 (6) They have allocated the daytime and most of the night to hymns to the gods and prayers, each man having his own hut and living, so far as possible, by himself. The Brahmans do not tolerate living in common or conversing much; when this happens, they withdraw for many days and do not speak, and often they also fast. (7) The Samaneans, as I said, are selected, and when someone is to be enrolled into the order, he first approaches the rulers of the city or village where he is,647 and renounces all his possessions and other property. He shaves the superfluous hair on his body,648 takes his robe and goes away to the Samaneans, without another look or word for his wife and children, if he has any, and thinking they are none of his business. The king looks after the children, so that they have the necessities of life, and the relatives look after the wife. (8) The Samanean way of life is like this. They live outside the city, spending the day in discussion of the divine; they have houses and sacred precincts built by the king, with administrators who receive an allowance from the king to feed those who gather there. Their meals are of rice, bread, fruit and vegetables. (9) They enter the house at the sound of a bell: those who are not Samaneans

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leave, and the Samaneans pray. After prayer the bell rings again, and the servants give each one a bowl (two do not eat from the same dish) and give them rice to eat. For those who need variety, some vegetables or fruit are added. They eat quickly, then go out to the same discussions. (10) None has a wife or possessions, and others have so much reverence for them and for the Brahmans that even the king visits them and supplicates them to pray and make requests for the troubles of the land, or to advise him on what to do. 18 Their attitude to death is such that they unwillingly endure the time of life as a kind of necessary service to nature, and are eager to liberate their souls from their bodies.649 (2) Often, when they are perceived to be in good health, with no evil pressing upon them or driving them on, they exit from life, though they give the others notice. No one will try to stop them, but everyone congratulates them and charges them with messages for their relatives among the dead: so well-established and so true do they, and the ordinary people, believe it to be that souls have a life with one another. (3) When these Samaneans have accepted the commissions given to them, they commit their bodies to fire, so as to separate the soul in its purest state from the body,650 and die accompanied by songs of praise. Their nearest and dearest are more ready to see them off to death than other people are to see their fellow-citizens off on the longest journeys. They weep for themselves because they remain in life, and count the others blessed to have received the lot of immortality. (4) Neither among them, nor among the others I have described, has a sophist come forward, ‘such as men now are’651 among the Greeks, to say, pretending he is at a loss, ‘If everyone imitates you, what will become of us?’ Human affairs are not in chaos because of them, because not everyone has imitated them, and those that do so have brought about order rather than chaos for their peoples. (5) Nor did law compel them: the law allowed others to eat meat, but left these autonomous, respecting them as greater than itself; it made not them, but the others, subject to its justice as originators of wrongdoing.652 (6) To those who ask ‘What will happen if everyone imitates such people?’, the answer of Pythagoras should be given. He said that if everyone became a king, it would be very difficult to get through life, but that does not mean that kingship should be avoided. And if everyone was virtuous, it would be impossible to set out a constitution in which worth was decided by virtue;653 but who would be mad enough not to think that everyone must strive to be virtuous? (7) There are many other things that the law concedes to the common man but not to the philosopher, or even to the citizen of a well-run city. The law would not accept into citizenship those who practise every craft, even though it did not forbid people to engage in those crafts, nor those from every condition of life, but it excludes manual workers from office and forbids them

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Book 4 any position of power whatever which requires justice or other virtues.654 (8) Nor does it forbid ordinary people to consort with prostitutes, but, even as it collects tax from prostitutes, it considers that for decent men, consorting with them is disgraceful and shameful.655 The law has not forbidden people to spend their time in wine-bars, but nevertheless that is reprehensible in a decent man. Something similar, then, is evident in relation to diet: that which is conceded to ordinary people would not be conceded to the best. (9) A man who engages in philosophy should prescribe for himself, as far as possible, the holy laws which have been determined by gods and by people who follow the gods. It is evident that the holy laws of peoples and cities impose purity on holy people and forbid them to eat animate food, and indeed prevent the masses from eating some kinds,656 whether from piety or because the food causes some harm. So one should either imitate the priests or obey all the legislators. (10) Either way, the fully law-abiding and pious man should abstain from all [animate foods]; for if in particular cases some people abstain in piety from some foods, the person who is pious in all cases will abstain from all.657 19 I almost omitted to cite Euripides, who says in these lines that the prophets of Zeus in Crete abstain: (2) the chorus is speaking to Minos.658 Child of Phoenician-born Europa the Tyrian and of the great Zan, ruler of hundred-citadelled Crete, I come, leaving the most holy temples, for which the native tree provides roof-beams – cut down by the Chalybean axe, fixed with bull-hide glue in secure joints – the cypress.659 I have led a pure life from the day I became an initiate of Zeus of Ida, fulfilling the thunder-rite of Zagreus Night-goer and the raw-meat feasts, holding up a torch for the mountain mother with the Kouretai I was called a bakkhos and sanctified.660 / In clothing all white, I shun the birth of mortals; I do not touch corpse-biers; I have set my guard against the eating of animate food.661 20 Holy men have posited that purity is being unmixed with the opposite, whereas mixing is contamination. That is why they thought that in eating crops, a food not taken from corpses nor animate by

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nature, they did not pollute that which is governed by nature, but they held that slaughtering sentient animals and taking away their souls is pollution for living creatures, and much more so to mix with the perception of a living creature a body which was sentient, but which has been deprived of its sentience and is a corpse.662 (2) Purity, in everything, is rejection of and abstaining from multiple and opposite things; it is singling out and taking that which is natural and appropriate.663 (3) This is also the reason why sex pollutes, for it is the coming together of female and male. Moreover, if the seed is retained, it makes a stain on the soul by its association with the body; and if it is not retained, it makes a stain by the dying of the deposited seed. The intercourse of male with male also pollutes, both because the seed will die and because it is against nature. In short, both sex and seminal emissions pollute, because soul is mixed with body and dragged down into pleasure.664 And the passions of the soul pollute by their involvement with unreason, as the inner male becomes feminised.665 (4) In a way, both ‘contamination’ and ‘staining’ mean the mixing of one kind with another, especially when it is difficult to wash off. That is why the word ‘stain’ is used of dyes, which are made up of mixtures, one thing being combined with another of a different kind, ‘as when a woman stains ivory with purple’.666 (5) Again, painters call mixtures ‘corruptions’, and in common usage something unmixed is pure, uncorrupted, unspoiled, intact.667 For example, water mixed with earth is corrupted and not unspoiled, but flowing, running water repels the earth that is in its path, when, as Hesiod says, it flows from ‘a perpetual overflowing spring, which is undisturbed’;668 and water is healthy to drink when it is uncorrupted and unmixed. (6) A female is said to be ‘uncorrupted’ when she has not taken into herself the exhalation of seed.669 So both corruption and staining are mixing with an opposite. (7) And putting dead creatures into living creatures, creatures which have lived by perception into creatures which are alive, dead flesh into living flesh, surely brings contamination and a stain on our soul, just as a soul is contaminated when it becomes incarnate. This is also why being engendered stains because soul is mixed with bodies, and dying stains because the body is left a corpse, something foreign and alien to the living body. (8) The soul is also stained by anger, appetite, and the multitude of passions, for which lifestyle is no doubt co-responsible. As water flowing from rock is uncorrupted by comparison with water which goes through marshes, in that it does not attract much silt, so the soul managing its own concerns in a body which is dry and not irrigated with the juices of alien flesh is stronger and uncorrupted and quicker to understand. Even for bees, they say, the dryest and sharpest thyme670 makes the best honey. (9) Thought is stained – or rather the person thinking is stained – when it is mixed with the faculties of receiving

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Book 4 impressions and forming opinions, and mingles its activities with theirs.671 Purification is separation of all these, purity is singling out, and food is that which maintains each thing in being. In this sense you might call the cause of its continuing and cohering the ‘food’ of a stone, and that which keeps it growing and bearing fruit the food of a plant, and that which maintains its system the food of an animal body.672 (10) It is one thing to feed, another to fatten; one thing to give what is necessary, another to provide luxuries. Foods, moreover, differ according to the difference of what is being fed. (11) We must feed everything in us, but endeavour to fatten that which is most important in us. Now the food of the rational soul is that which maintains it in rationality; and that is intellect.673 So it should be fed on intellect, and we should strive to fatten it on that, not to fatten our flesh on meat. For intellect sustains our everlasting life, but when the body is fattened it starves the soul of blessed life and enlarges the mortal part, distracting and obstructing the soul on its way to immortal life, and it stains the soul by incarnating it and dragging it down to that which is alien. (12) A magnet gives soul to iron placed near it, and the heaviest iron becomes light as it rushes up to the breath of the magnet.674 If someone depends on the incorporeal and intellectual god, will he busy himself acquiring the food that fattens the body, that obstruction to the intellect? Will he not rather reduce what is necessary for the flesh to something small and easily obtained, and himself be fed by adhering to the god more closely than iron to the magnet? (13) If only it were possible to abstain without problems even from crops as food, if there were not this corruptible part of our nature! If only, as Homer says, we had no need of food or drink, so that we might really be immortals!675 The poet rightly shows that food is a provision not only for life but also for death; so if we did not need this food, we should be the more blessed inasmuch as more immortal. (14) But as it is, being in the state of mortality, we unwittingly make ourselves (so to speak) even more mortal by taking in this food, for the soul does not, as Theophrastus says somewhere, pay the body a high rent for its lodging there, but offers itself entire.676 (15) If only it were easy to get the legendary hunger-suppressant and thirst-suppressant, so that by holding in check the flux of the body one could engage for a little in the best activities: by being engaged in them God is God.677 (16) But why should one lament these things to people so obfuscated that they cherish their own evil, and hate first themselves and their true parent, then those who remind them and exhort them to sober up from their drunkenness?678 So we must dismiss such people and move on to the questions that are left. 21 Those who cite the Nomads or the Troglodytes or the Ikhthyophagi, in opposition to my examples of the customs of peoples, fail to realise that they have been constrained by necessity to this kind of

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food, their land being so infertile that it bears not even plants, but only sand-dunes. A proof of this constraint is that they cannot even use fire for lack of wood to burn, but roast the fish on stones or sand.679 (2) They do this from necessity; there are some peoples who have lapsed into savagery or are bestial by nature, but it is not right for intelligent people to use them to slander human nature, for that would call into question not only the eating of animals but the eating of humans, and civilised behaviour in general. (3) It is reported, for example, that the Massagetai and the Derbikes think those of their relatives who die naturally are most pitiable; so they act first to sacrifice and feast on their nearest and dearest when they grow old. (4) The Tibarenoi take the old people who are closest to them and throw them alive from a cliff; the Hyrcanians put them out for birds and dogs while still alive, the Caspians when they are dead. The Scythians bury alive with the dead, or slaughter on the funeral pyre, those whom the dead most loved, and the Bactrians feed their old people alive to the dogs. (5) Stasanor, viceroy of Alexander, undertook to stop this practice, and almost lost his power.680 (6) We have not abandoned civilised behaviour towards fellow-humans because of these people; likewise we shall imitate, not those peoples who of necessity eat flesh, but those who are pious and inclined towards the gods. As Demokrates said,681 to live badly, without intelligence or temperance or piety, is not bad life, but long death. 22 It remains to bring forward some individual testimonies to abstinence, since that was one of the points to be answered.682 (2) According to tradition, Triptolemos was the most ancient of the legislators of Athens, and Hermippus writes of him as follows, in book two of On the Legislators.683 ‘They say that Triptolemos made laws for the Athenians, and Xenokrates the philosopher says that these three are still in force at Eleusis: respect parents, honour the gods with crops, do not harm animals. (3) The first two, Xenokrates says, were rightly handed down, for our parents are benefactors and we must return good for good so far as possible, and we must give the gods first-fruits from what they have given us that helps us to live. But as for the third, he is at a loss to know what Triptolemos had in mind when he instructed people to abstain from animals. (4) “Did he simply think” he asks “that it is terrible to kill one’s kin, or did he realise that the animals most useful to us were being killed by people for food? So, wanting to make life civilised, he tried to preserve those animals which live with humans and those that are the most tame; unless, indeed, having ordained that the gods should be honoured with fruits, he thought this kind of honour would last longer if there were no animal sacrifices to the gods.” ’684 (5) Xenokrates gives several other reasons, which are not reliable; it is enough for us that, according to him, this was a law of Triptolemos. (6) So later by transgressing

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Book 4 this law, when – as I have shown – they ate animals under great constraint and with wrongdoing they did not intend, they were liable under this law.685 (7) Such a law of Drakon is also remembered, a ruling to last for ever among the inhabitants of Attica, [valid for all time]:686 honour the gods and the heroes of the land, in public following ancestral customs, in private as best one can, with good words, first-fruits of crops, and annual offerings of cakes. The law required the divine to be honoured with first-fruits of those crops that people use, and with cakes 687

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Notes 1. Firmus Castricius is named in the opening sentence of each of the four books. He is unknown except for P.’s references to him in the Life of Plotinus 2.21-3 and 7.22-8 (unless he is the Firmus whose commentary on Plato Parmenides is cited by Damascius, Bidez 1913: 98). P. says (Life 2.21-3) that Plotinus, in his final illness, withdrew to an estate in Campania which had belonged to his friend Zethus, now dead; his wants were supplied from this estate and from the property of Castricius, which was at Minturnae. In Life 7.17-28 P. says more about both: ‘Zethus was a medical man and a great friend of Plotinus, who kept trying to divert him from his political interests and inclinations. They were on close terms: Plotinus used to go and stay with him on an estate six miles outside Minturnae, which had been owned by Castricius Firmus, the greatest lover of beauty [philokalôtatos] of our time, who revered Plotinus, assisted Amelius in everything like a good house-slave, and behaved to me, Porphyry, in all respects like a true-born brother. So he too revered Plotinus, having chosen the life of politics.’ philokalos must allude to Plato, Phaedrus 248d: ‘[the soul] which saw most [of the truth] is to be planted in a lover of wisdom [philosophos] or of beauty [philokalos]’. (Brisson 1992: 234 notes that philokalos can mean a cultured anthologist; the Philokalia of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, an anthology of Origen, no doubt evoked both meanings.) But does P. mean that Castricius, like Zethus, had chosen the life of politics, or does he refer back to Zethus? Commentators differ (see further Brisson 1982: 89-90 and 1992: 233-4), but if Castricius had political ambitions, that might explain his rejection of abstinence (see on 1.2.2, and Introduction 2). 2. ‘ancient and godfearing’ probably refers to Pythagoras and Empedocles as in 1.3.3 (and cf. 1.36.1 for Pythagoreans as examples); for P.’s use of ‘ancient’ see 3.1.4 and note. ‘respect’ translates eulabeia, a word often used in Abst.: it usually connotes religiously motivated fear (like Latin religio), which prompts either wariness or reverence. In this opening paragraph P. includes himself with Castricius, but in 1.2.3 and 1.3.3 he emphasises Castricius’ commitment to Pythagoreanism (perhaps simply because it was Castricius who had lapsed). P.’s own commitment is more difficult to assess. There was no clear division between Platonism and Pythagoreanism. Plotinus, according to P., expounded Pythagorean ideas (Life of Plotinus 21), and P.’s arrangement of his writings as Enneads (‘ninefolds’) in six groups of nine (three nines, then two, then one) pointed to Pythagorean teaching on numbers. Abst. makes only a few allusions to Pythagoras (especially 2.36.6, 3.1.4): these may be intended as a signal to others who shared in esoteric Pythagorean teaching, but it is puzzling that P. does not use the Pythagoreans as the obvious example of a Greek intellectual and spiritual abstinent elite, deeply concerned with justice and making proper sacrifices. See on 4.5.6, and see further Cherlonneix 1992, Clark 2000. 3. ‘I have escaped evil and found good’ was said in the Eleusinian mysteries by the ‘child from the hearth’ (cf. 4.5.4). The child probably represented Demophoon, son of the king of Eleusis: Demeter nursed him and began to burn away his mortality in the hearth-fire (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 239-42). The Athenian orator Isaeus (fourth century BCE, cited by the lexicographer Harpocration) said

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Notes to page 31 that the child was Athenian and was chosen from a list to be initiated on behalf of the community. Empedocles (see on 1.3.4) is central to P.’s concerns in Abst. He claimed a special relationship with the divine which allowed him to speak with authority about purification and against meat-eating. P. keeps to his policy (1.3.4) of not discussing the philosophy of Empedocles in detail, but several times quotes him, and also alludes to his doctrine of reincarnation (see on 1.6.3). ‘As Empedocles said’ cannot be a direct quotation, because Empedocles wrote hexameters, and editors from Diels-Kranz on have not recognised it as a fragment. Nauck accepts the conjecture apodusamenôi, ‘stripped off ’, for apoduramenôi, ‘lamented’. 4. P. means the descent of the soul from the intelligible world to involvement with the body and the material world: see further on 1.29.4, 1.30.7. 5. Both ‘you’ (as the subject of metabalesthai, ‘change’) and ‘for’ (Nauck’s conjecture heneka, which he does not print) are necessary additions. 6. Does the fear affect Castricius or P.? Bouffartigue thinks the latter, and interprets ‘a greater fear of [i.e. that there is] impiety in your transgression’. If the fear affects Castricius, he has probably reverted to traditional cult: bad daimones or misguided philosophers have deceived him into fearing that the gods will be angry, and perhaps that he will be a social outcast, if he does not sacrifice animals (see 2 chs 38-43; 2.61.6-8). This would be impiety towards the divine, because it is an unworthy concept of the gods (2 chs 32-5), and also towards the teachers that P. and Castricius had followed: Empedocles in particular regarded meat-eating as transgression (cf. 2.31.5). If the fear affects P. (a less likely interpretation of the Greek), Castricius may have decided, like the Gnostics P. attacks in 1 ch. 42, that lifestyle does not affect wisdom: the soul is not contaminated by the body’s involvement in the material world, so it does not matter what he eats. This would also be impiety towards Pythagoras and Empedocles (and indeed Plotinus, who is never mentioned in Abst.) and towards the divine, which can be approached only in purity of body and soul (1 chs 29-44). 7. pothon, ‘longing’, was suggested by Fogerolles for MSS phobon, ‘fear’ (repeated from the previous sentence). 8. ‘you were committed’ translates ezêlôkas: cf. Life of Plotinus 7.1, which distinguishes the zêlôtai, the committed students of philosophy, from the wider circle of listeners, akroatai (on this distinction, see further Fowden 1982). ‘Ancestral law’ could refer to philosophical rather than local tradition, but cf. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 9.127-8: ‘The followers of Pythagoras and Empedocles and the mass of Italians say that we have some community not only with each other and with the gods, but also with the irrational animals.’ Empedocles was Sicilian, Pythagorean tradition was strongest in south Italy, and Castricius had property at Minturnae in Campania (see on 1.1.1). 9. P. probably refers to the Galli, male devotees of Cybele (the Great Mother) who castrated themselves in her honour: he could have seen them in Rome, where Cybele had a temple on the Palatine and a spring festival. (Fogerolles and de Rhoer saw a reference to the Maccabees, who suffered death from amputation rather than abandon Jewish food-rules, but ektomê moriôn, literally ‘excision of parts’, means specifically ‘castration’.) The motive of the Galli was probably to perpetuate their ritual sexual abstinence; but it was common knowledge that castration, especially if post-pubertal, does not exclude either desire or performance. (See further Nock 1972 [1925]: later bibliography in Roller 1997.) Julian, in his theological treatise On the Mother of the Gods, comments (Or. 5.174a) on the abstinence (hagneia) that precedes the rite ‘Everyone thinks it ridiculous that the sacred law allows meat-eating but forbids the eating of seeds: are not seeds inanimate and meat animate? Are not seeds pure, but meat full of blood and of much else that is

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Notes to pages 31-32 not easily tolerated by sight and hearing? Most important, is it not the case that nothing is injured by eating seeds, whereas eating meat requires the sacrifice and slaughter of animals that – we may suppose – suffer pain and distress?’ In Or. 5.175-7 he notes that the rituals of the Mother also imposed abstinence from specific foods: some plant foods, and also pigs, are too strongly associated with earth; apples are sacred, pomegranates belong to the underworld (see on 4.16.2), dates do not grow in Phrygia (home of the cult); fish are not sacrificial animals (because, he says, humans do not look after them). P. probably intends a contrast between this drastic but selective abstinence and the gentle but consistent abstinence of the true philosopher (1 ch. 32). 10. The Greek shifts from singular ‘you’ (‘you were saying’) to plural ‘you’ (‘persuaded  prepared to deceive yourselves’). This may indicate that P. is now thinking of Castricius as representative of a philosophical position. 11. Some Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle) agreed with Aristotle’s statements that animals are not rational and that no justice is possible between humans and animals; others, notably Theophrastus, disagreed (see further on 3.1.4). The Stoics (followers of Zeno) developed Aristotle’s position, and the extensive writings of their ‘second founder’ Chrysippus (see on 3.20.1) were a major target for Plutarch and thus for P., who borrows extensively from him (see on 3.18.1). Some Peripatetic and Stoic arguments are summarised in 1 chs 4-6, but detailed refutation is postponed to book 3, where P. does his best to make Aristotle sympathetic to animals, and attacks the Stoic claim that animals are entirely without reason and are for human use. In 1 chs 7-12 P. reports Epicurean arguments that no justice is possible between humans and animals because animals cannot make contracts, and that human advantage requires licence to kill animals. Responses to these arguments are more scattered: see notes on 1 chs 7-12. 12. ‘Follower’ translates zêlôtês: see on 1.2.3, and on 1.1.1 for P.’s own commitment. The names of Pythagoras and Empedocles immediately suggested vegetarianism: see Sextus cited on 1.2.3, and Cicero Republic 3.11.19 (probably from Carneades, see on 3.20.3): ‘those great and learned men, Pythagoras and Empedocles, declare that all living creatures have the same legal status, and proclaim that inexpiable penalties threaten those by whom a living creature is harmed’. All traditions about the life and work of Pythagoras (fl. after 530 BCE, dates uncertain) are contested (see, for a brief account, Clark 1989: xviii-ix). Empedocles (c. 495-435 BCE) wrote philosophy in hexameter verse, which survives in fragments (ed. and tr. Inwood 1992). Both argued that animals are akin to humans, not only because they are made of the same elements but because souls may be reincarnated in animals or in humans (see on 1.6.3). Killing and eating animals was thus equivalent to murder and even cannibalism, and abstinence from flesh foods was a necessary purification of soul and body. 13. Possibly Sextus Clodius (Suetonius, Grammarians and Rhetors 29, discussed by Kaster 1995: 308), who taught both Latin and Greek rhetoric in the late first century BCE; but Suetonius says he came from Sicily. This might be only a biographer’s deduction from Mark Antony’s gift to him of tax-free Sicilian land (Cicero, Philippics 2.43), but there is no positive evidence to identify him with the unknown Clodius the Neapolitan. If this Clodius came from Naples (the most famous of the many towns called Nea Polis, ‘Newtown’), he probably had links with the Epicurean tradition there. He may also be the Sextus Clodius, who wrote in Greek, cited by Lactantius Divine Institutes 1.22.11 on the cult of Bona Dea. ‘Scholar’ translates philologos, not always a favourable word: Plotinus said that Longinus was philologos but not philosophos (Life 14); see further Pépin 1992. 14. P.’s source for 1 chs 7-12 was the Against Empedocles of Hermarchus (see

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Notes to page 32 on 1.7.1), which extended to 22 books. Empedocles’ cosmology is not relevant to P.’s argument; 1.6.3 and 1 ch. 19 briefly consider some anti-vegetarian arguments derived from his belief in reincarnation. For P.’s other sources, see on 1.31.1. 15. Proverbial for sacrilege (as in Herodotus 6.134). 16. ‘our concern’: reading pros hêmas, with the MSS and Nauck, not prosêkontas, ‘related to us’, as Bouffartigue suggests. 17. ‘family’ here translates oikeios, ‘one’s own’ or ‘part of the household’ [oikos], generally ‘belonging’. oikeios and related words are central to Abst. Theophrastus (see on 3.25.1) argued for oikeiotês, ‘relatedness’, of humans and animals. For Stoics, the oikeion is that which we recognise as appropriate to ourselves (as opposed to allotrion, ‘alien’, cf. 1.4.3): we begin with what we need for self-preservation, and as reason develops we also recognise other people, beginning with our families, as appropriate objects of our concern. This process is oikeiôsis, a word notoriously difficult to translate. The conventional ‘appropriation’ is used in this translation, but it misleadingly suggests takeover, whereas oikeiôsis as Stoics used it is concerned with acknowledgement of a relationship. ‘Familiarisation’ is too weak; Schofield 1995: 196 suggests ‘identifying with’, Inwood 1985: 184-5 ‘orientation’. Stoics argued that human oikeiôsis extends only to beings like us, i.e. rational beings (gods are also rational), and excludes animals (see on 3.19.2). P. also speaks of oikeiôsis and oikeiousthai (the related verb) to the divine (1.57.2, 2.45.2). For the history of oikeiôsis, see further Pembroke 1971, Striker 1983, Long 1996. 18. Aristotle, Pol. 1256b16-20: ‘plants are for the sake of animals, other animals for the sake of humans: the tame ones for use and for food, most (if not all) of the wild ones for food and other resources, for clothing and other tools to be made from them.’ Cf. Cato in Cicero On Ends 3.67 (= LS 57F): ‘[the Stoic] Chrysippus excellently said that everything else was created for the sake of humans and gods, but these for the sake of their own community and society; consequently humans can without injustice use beasts for their utility to humans.’ ‘Of another kind’ translates ekphulon: ‘outside the tribe’, i.e. from a different descent-group; here the metaphor is political, but P. often uses phulê and compounds to mean ‘species’ (e.g. homophulos, ‘same tribe’, in 1.5.2, 1.19.1). ‘The other beasts’ (thêria): usually the phrase is ‘the other animals’ (zôia), i.e. the non-human animals, but thêria conveys distance from humans. Nauck emends alla, ‘other’, to aloga, ‘irrational’. 19. ‘Alien’ and ‘appropriate’: see on 1.4.1. 20. ‘Living like beasts’ implies not only absence of civilised life but also ferocity (for debates on primitive life, see further on 4.2.3); P’s two accounts of primitive vegetarian life (2 chs 5-7 from Theophrastus, 4 ch. 2 from Dicaearchus) make it austere but peaceful. 1.4.4-6.1 inclusive is almost exact citation of Plutarch, Animal Cleverness 964a-c (de Sollertia Animalium). 963f, which precedes the citation, says ‘The Stoics and the Peripatetics strongly argue the opposite case [i.e. opposite to the case that animals are rational], saying that justice would not come into being, but would be entirely without form or substance, if all animals share in reason.’ 1.4.1-3 appears to be Porphyry’s own summary of arguments. He does not identify Plutarch as his source here or at 1.26.4, but Plutarch Flesh-Eating (de Esu Carnium, Moralia 993-5), now fragmentary, counters several of the arguments advanced by Heracleides and/or Clodius (see on 1.13.1) in 1 chs 13-26. 21. Diodorus Siculus 3.32 says that ‘Nomads’ is the Greek name for Troglodytes. They lived by the Red Sea, ate the meat of their herds and drank their milk mixed with blood. Their social and sexual practices are represented as bizarre. 22. ‘effective’ translates energês, read by Bouffartigue; Nauck retains the MSS enargês, ‘visible’ or ‘distinct’. The MSS of Plutarch, whom P. is transcribing here

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Notes to pages 32-33 (see on 1.4.4), have en oresi, ‘on the hillsides’ (i.e. the hunting grounds), for which Post (Loeb XII.346) conjectured enaerios, ‘of the air’, in contrast to ‘on land or sea’. 23. Plutarch 964a: ‘if we learn to behave to all animals as is fitting if they are rational and of the same kind, harmlessly and with respect’. 24. ‘Almost no work’ translates the MSS eipein gar ergon ouden; Plutarch has ergon estin eipein, ‘it is a task to say’. 25. Works and Days 277-9; Hesiod does not actually say that people cannot behave justly to animals (Fortenbaugh 1971: 138). Cf. the myth told by Protagoras in Plato Protagoras 320c-322d: humans try to fight off the beasts, but their society cannot work until Zeus gives humans dikê (justice) and aidôs (respect for others). 26. The Plutarch quotation ends here, but perhaps 1.6.2-3 is P.’s summary: ‘as I have already said’ refers to 1.4.4. ‘No path either broad or narrow’: if you reject the argument that animals cannot be treated with justice, you thereby characterise human behaviour towards animals as unjust, so you still exclude the possibility of justice. 27. It is not clear from the Greek whether the reported speech (i.e. what P. has already said) has an unstated subject or an unstated object. If the first, we destroy our nature; if the second, it destroys us. 28. Possibly ‘their superstition did not’, rather than a general comment on the effects of superstition; but the tenses in the first sentence of 1.6.3 are present not past. P. is here engaged in a very rapid summary of arguments. 29. ‘Reincarnation’ translates metamorphôsis, ‘change of shape’ (but continuity of consciousness, as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses). At 4.16.2 P. uses metempsukhôsis, which suggests continuity of body and change of soul: according to Olympiodorus On Plato’s Phaedo 9.6 (p. 54 Norvin), metensômatôsis (continuity of soul, change of body) is a more accurate word. Pythagoras and Empedocles both said that their souls had been in animals and plants. Diogenes Laertius (8.4) reports from Heraclides Ponticus (see on 1.13.1) that ‘Euphorbos [] told how many plants and animals his soul had entered’: this soul, originally Aethalides son of Hermes, became Pythagoras. Cf. P.’s summary of Pythagorean teaching, Life of Pythagoras 19: ‘everyone knew that he taught that the soul is immortal, that it transfers [metaballon] into other kinds of animals, and also that, at regular intervals, that which once was is born again, and nothing is entirely new; and that all animate creatures must be considered the same in kind [homogenê].’ Empedocles said that he had been ‘a boy and a girl and a bush and a bird and a fish’ (Inwood 111, DK 117). The transmigration of souls was used as an argument against meat-eating (cf. Plutarch, Flesh-Eating 998c), but not against plant-eating: for the debate on plant souls, see 1.21.1 and on 3.19.2. Plato, Timaeus 91D-92C, suggested that birds, animals and fish are reincarnated humans who variously misused their human lives (cf. Phaedo 81DE). But how can a rational soul enter the body of a (supposedly) non-rational being? It cannot become irrational: does its rationality become inactive (merely potential) for the duration, and the irrational aspect of soul, or even its growth-principle, take over? Empedocles, according to Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors 8.286), had one solution: he ‘held that all things are rational, not just animals but also plants, writing explicitly “Know that all things have wisdom [phronêsis] and a share of thought” ’. The fuller citation in Hippolytus (Inwood 16, DK 110) shows that ‘not just animals but also plants’ is Sextus’ gloss; but Empedocles did argue for the relatedness of all living beings (Balaudé 1997). Plotinus (Ennead 3.4.2, using metensômatôsis) developed the Timaeus suggestion, perhaps not too seriously: ‘when [the soul] goes out of the body it becomes what there was most of in it [] Those who lived by perception [aisthêsis] alone become animals []. But if they did not even live by perception

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Notes to page 33 and their desires, but by sluggishness of perception and their desires, they turn into plants; for the growth-principle [phutikon] was the only or the main principle active in them, and they were practising to be trees.’ Plotinus, and other Platonists, also considered ‘remote control’ options (Sorabji 1993: 188-93) in which the human soul, or its separable (intellectual) part, does not actually enter the animal body. Augustine said (City of God 10.30) that P. rightly disagreed with Plato and Plotinus, arguing that a human soul could not be reincarnated in an animal; but P. too may have considered different options (Smith 1984: 277-84, Carlier 1998). In Abst. he keeps to his policy (1.3.4) of not discussing Empedocles, and reincarnation never becomes a central argument. See further 1 ch. 19. 30. A very brief survey; book 3 discusses in detail the underlying argument that animals are unlike humans because they are not rational. 31. At 1.26.4 P. identifies his source for the ‘long genealogy’ (fair comment on this long-winded exposition) as Hermarchus, who succeeded Epicurus as leader of the school in 271 BCE. He wrote 22 books Against Empedocles (Diogenes Laertius 10.25, corrected by Obbink 1988), who was a resource for his contemporaries (see on 2.21.2-3); he also argued against Pythagoreans, Stoics and Peripatetics. Little survives of this work except 1 chs 7-12, which may have been modified by P.: see subsequent notes and LS 22MN; Longo Auricchio 1988 fr. 34, discussion 137-50. P. cites Hermarchus at length because he defends the exclusion of animals from the social contract and the killing of animals which do not pose a direct threat to people. 32. ‘sacrilege’ translates anosion; cf. 1.9.3-4 for the use of religious sanctions. Convinced Epicureans would find such sanctions meaningless, because Epicurus maintained (Key Doctrines 1 = Diogenes Laertius 10.139) that the gods are not affected by anger or favour. But he also said (Letter to Menoeceus, Diogenes Laertius 10.123-4) that people who have false beliefs about the gods are disturbed by those beliefs, and Hermarchus envisages legislators exploiting this fear. 33. Epicurus (Key Doctrines 32, Diogenes Laertius 10.150) said ‘Nothing is just or unjust in relation to those animals which were unable to make contracts about not harming each other or being harmed, or in relation to those peoples who were unable or did not wish to make contracts about not harming each other or being harmed.’ Here, Hermarchus (or P.) adds the suggestion that, apart from contracts, there is a natural ‘appropriation’ (see on 1.4.2 for this translation of oikeiôsis) of human to human: that is, humans naturally recognise other humans as proper objects of concern. This would protect those humans who cannot make contracts, e.g. infants, but Epicurus, unlike Aristotle and the Stoics, did not argue that humans are naturally social. Either 1.7.1 is an addition by P., or Hermarchus developed the argument, perhaps to explain how human co-operation ever got started. In 1.10.3-4 Hermarchus uses ‘kin’ only of those humans who contribute to the security of the group (i.e. kinship is based on utility, see further Vander Waert 1988), but the group could recognise the usefulness of raising successors. Cf. Lucretius 5.1019-23: ‘then neighbours began to form alliances, wanting neither to hurt nor to be harmed, and commended children and women when they conveyed inarticulately with sounds and gestures that it is fair for all to pity the weak’: ‘commend’ translates commendare, which Cicero, On Ends 3.16, used as a partial translation of oikeiôsis. 34. Nauck prints Hercher’s emendation khrêsomenôn, ‘would use’, for khrêsamenôn, ‘used’. ‘Would use’ gives better sense to the preceding kai, ‘also’ or ‘even’. 35. ‘Analyse’ translates epilogismos, Epicurus’ term for non-technical assessment of what is observed to happen. Schofield 1996 suggests ‘appraisal’ as the best translation, but ‘analyse’ is used here, and in 1.10.4 where epilogismos is trans-

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Notes to pages 33-34 lated ‘rational analysis’, because Hermarchus contrasts rational analysis (‘this is advantageous because ’) with ‘non-rational memory’, alogos mnêmê (i.e. memory without articulable content, cf. 3.3.2 note on alogos phantasia). 36. ‘Remedy’ translates pharmakon. Epicurus’ ‘fourfold remedy’, tetrapharmakos, for the problems of life is a set of four basic propositions: ‘God presents no fears, death no worries; and while good is readily attainable, evil is readily endurable’ (tr. LS 25J). But ignorance could refuse the remedy. (Cf. 4.18.5-9 for P.’s own argument that laws are intended for those who cannot regulate their lives by philosophy.) 37. hormê, ‘impulse’, became a Stoic technical term for the movement from assent to action (LS 33I); it is not known whether Epicurus also used it (Annas 1992: 176-7). This use may be P.’s paraphrase; alternatively, hormê, oikeiôsis (1.7.1 and note) and adiaphoron (1.12.3 and note) were not, for Hermarchus, exclusively Stoic terms. 38. ‘I myself ’ could be Hermarchus, transcribed by P., explaining why he approves of a religious sanction even though Epicureans held that the gods do not intervene in human affairs: cf. 1.7.1, and the description of religious sanctions as alogos phobos, ‘irrational fear’, in 1.9.4. But it is also possible that sections 3-5 are one of P.’s summaries before he reaches the argument which really interests him, about the killing of animals. ‘Killings condoned by the law’: cf. Plato, Laws 865B, which prescribes purification, but no legal penalty, for involuntary homicide in competition, war or training. For purification in cases of justifiable homicide, see Parker 1983: 366-9. 39. Reading diakosmêsantôn, with Bouffartigue, for MSS diakonêsantôn, ‘ministering to’; Abresch suggested dioikêsantôn, ‘managing’. 40. The anoêtos, ‘unintellectual’, part of the soul, is here equivalent to the alogon, the non-rational part (cf. 3.21.2, where the two are combined); the later Platonist distinction (see on 1.29.1) between nous (intellect) and discursive reason is not yet relevant. In everyday Greek anoêtos meant ‘silly’. Hermarchus (or P., see on 1.9.3) uses the vocabulary of domesticating (hêmeros, tithaseuein) this irrational creature. ‘Movement’ translates phora, another word shared with Stoics (see on 1.8.5): Chrysippus used it as almost equivalent to hormê, ‘impulse’ (see further Tieleman 1996: 163). 41. Opposite action: you may not kill any human being with impunity, but you may kill any animal. In book 4 (see 4.1.2 and note) P. argues that it is abstinence which is advantageous to the community, and in 1.48.3-55.4 he uses Epicurean teachings to argue that a simple meat-free diet is advantageous and pleasurable. 42. Greek amunesthai touto, ‘to defend against this’, but ‘this’ has no obvious antecedent. Abresch suggested tous, i.e. ‘unless those who gathered together attempted to defend themselves’. Fogerolles suggested auta, ‘them’, i.e. ‘to ward off other animals’, and this is accepted by LS 2.138. ‘Forming groups’ translates suntrephesthai, literally ‘feeding together’, which suggests herds. Hermarchus does not explicitly say that human groups formed for defence against wild animals, and 1.10.3 refers to threats both from other species and from other humans; but 1.10.4 does suggest that danger from other species had been the main motive for the ban on homicide. For the ‘war against the beasts’ see 1.14.1 (not ascribed to Hermarchus), and cf. Plato, Protagoras 322B. 43. Reading autoi, ‘themselves’, as suggested by Reiske and followed by Bouffartigue and by LS 2.138; Nauck retains MSS autou, i.e. ‘from actual killing’. 44. The ‘brightest’ (Greek khariestatoi) people abstain from killing, without qualification; they remind the others to abstain from, i.e. abstain from killing, their kin. So the brightest have already realised that security will eventually

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Notes to pages 35-36 depend on more than their immediate group, but there is no claim that humans are naturally social (compare 1.7.1). 45. ‘Dragging away of victims’ attempts to make sense of Greek paraspaseôs (as in the ed. pr. and subsequent editions, including Nauck): that is, there was no longer an immediate threat to humans from predators. Bouffartigue accepts the MSS parasparseôs and interprets it as ‘being dispersed’: cf. Plato Protagoras 332B, ‘humans lived scattered and had no cities, so they were being destroyed by the beasts’. Felicianus translated ‘and thus other animals were excluded and dispersed’; Reiske suggested perispasis, ‘distraction’ which preoccupied the first human communities. epilogismos: see on 1.8.2; the ‘non-rational memory’ (cf. 1.10.2) is something like ‘remember what happened before’ as opposed to ‘remember that we survive better if we stand together’. 46. Hermarchus does not explicitly make the point that humans, for their own safety, are killing the predators that would keep down numbers. His argument is answered at 1.53.1 and 4.14.3. 47. P. agrees, but disapproves: 2.11.2. 48. Bouffartigue declares a lacuna, but it is possible to make sense of the sentence without (so Nauck). Hermarchus’ point is that laws reflect conduct which is actually useful: they do not arbitrarily impose rules which depend on individual belief. Similarly, rules for healthy living reflect general experience (but may, of course, vary with circumstances or with individual need). 49. ‘indifferents’: adiaphorôn, which became (see on 1.8.5) the Stoic technical term for things which make no real difference to human well-being (Diogenes Laertius 7.104). This category, for Stoics, includes everything except virtue and vice. 50. Epicurus, Key Doctrines 36 (Diogenes Laertius 10.151): ‘in general, justice is the same for everyone, because it is something useful in their community with each other. But in terms of the particular character of a land, or of any other factors, it does not follow that justice is the same for all.’ 51. ‘It would have been fine’ keeps the ambiguity of the Greek kalôs eikhe, which could mean that it would have been all right, or that it would have been good. 52. Is it the only way? Epicurus himself (Key Doctrines 32, cited on 1.7.1) refers to ‘those animals which cannot make contracts’ in parallel with those peoples who cannot or do not want to: this seems to allow the possibility that there are animals (other than humans) who can make contracts. A fragment of his On Nature (LS 20J) says that we do not admonish or try to reform or even retaliate against wild animals, because we think their development is intrinsic to their nature, whereas we do admonish some. These must be tame animals, who do modify their behaviour in response to the tone of the human voice or to the threat of punishment, and who could therefore be thought to make an implicit contract, founded on utility, not to hurt or be hurt. Lucretius makes this point in 5.860-77, esp. 860-1: ‘there are many animals which survive, commended to us by their usefulness and handed over to our guardianship’ (see on 1.7.1 for commendare, ‘commend’, as a partial translation of oikeiôsis). Hermarchus, by contrast, argues that all animals are ‘not receptive of reason’ (i.e. can neither reason for themselves nor follow instructions) so cannot share in law: that is, they cannot understand either their own advantage or the threat of punishment (see further Alberti 1995: 167). Polystratus, successor of Hermarchus as head of the Epicurean school, said (in a context now difficult to establish) that ‘either animals do not have signs and omens and presages, good or bad, or anything else of the kind, or they have them but do not comprehend them, because they do not share in reasoning, or not one like ours’ (Indelli 1978: 111; see further Annas 1992: 134-7). So the Epicurean position is that although animals

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Notes to pages 36-37 may respond to signs, e.g. by running away when a human runs towards them shouting, they cannot progress to ‘he will hit me if I take what he wants to eat’, still less to ‘if you feed me I’ll defend your food from others’. In 3.12.1-3 P. notes the reciprocal need of humans and the animals that live with humans; he does not call this an implicit contract, but in the following section (3.13.1) he points out that not making a contract does not prove non-rationality; and in 3.22.3 he notes that people think they can correct the behaviour of some animals. 53. At 1.26.4 P. lists his sources so far in reverse order: Clodius, Heracleides Ponticus, Hermarchus the Epicurean, and Stoics and Peripatetics unspecified (in fact borrowed from Plutarch: see on 1.4.4). Presumably, then, the arguments and examples of chs 13-26 come from Clodius (see on 1.3.3) and from Heracleides Ponticus (388-310 BCE), a student of Plato and Aristotle who wrote lively dialogues, illustrated with myths and anecdotes, on many subjects including Pythagoreans (Diogenes Laertius 5.88; see further Gottschalk 1980). Attribution is difficult, especially if Clodius cited Heracleides, because P. also selects and comments (see on 1.19.1), and Plutarch (see on 1.4.4) may also be an intermediary. Some items (e.g. 1.25.3-9) are later than Heracleides. The style is noticeably sharper and simpler than that of Hermarchus. 54. Greek sunestioi, people who share a hearth (hestia) or a house. 55. That is, when humans learned to make use of a natural phenomenon. Plutarch (Flesh-Eating 995ab) says that meat-eating cannot be natural to humans, because humans are not naturally equipped to kill, eat and digest living prey, and cannot eat even dead flesh without ‘altering it by fire and drugs’ (pharmaka, presumably herbs and spices). But perhaps humans are distinctively animals that cook? 56. Homer is here used as evidence for universal human nature. In Iliad 11.479 the Trojans are compared to jackals trailing the wounded Odysseus; in both 4.35 (Hera described by Zeus) and 22.347 (Achilles to the dying Hector) eating an enemy raw is the extreme of hatred. ‘Eating meat raw’ has to be supplied in the first lacuna, to make grammatical sense. A second lacuna precedes Odyssey 1.141-2, in which cooked meat is offered as (acceptable) food to the disguised Athena. 57. Diodorus Siculus 3.16.1 (from Agatharchides of Cnidus, second century BCE) describes the Ikhthyophagi (fish-eaters) of the Red Sea who roast fish on stones. 58. cf. 1.10.1 and note. Plotinus said (when discussing the problem of providence) that there was war among animals and among people: ‘the other animals eat each other, and men attack each other, and there is always war with never a pause or an armistice’ (Ennead 3.2.15, tr. Armstrong). 59. Not usually, but the Hippocratic treatise On Regimen (c. 400 BCE) 2.46 includes all three (and foxes and hedgehogs) among ‘animals which are eaten’, and Galen Properties of Foodstuffs 3.2 (VI.600-8K) includes an even wider range. See further Garnsey 1999: 84. Plutarch (Flesh-Eating 994b) points out that we kill lions and wolves in self-defence, but we eat not these, but tame and harmless animals. 60. See on 3.20.1. 61. P. (or his source) seems oddly reluctant here to use the word ‘pig’ (perhaps compare the use of ‘this’ for animal sacrifice in 2.24.5). In 2.61.7 P. says that Hebrews abstain from pigs, most Phoenicians and Egyptians from cows; Herodotus 2.47 says that Egyptians consider pigs unclean, and sacrifice them only to Dionysos and to Selene. P. identifies himself as Greek, never as Phoenician (cf. 2.56.2, and see further Millar 1997, Clark 1999). 62. Plutarch (Flesh-eating 995de) argues that a body stuffed with unsuitable food coarsens [pakhunein] and obscures the soul; cf. Apollonius of Tyana (Philos-

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Notes to pages 37-38 tratus, Life of Apollonius 1.8), who ‘refused animate foods both because they are unclean and because they coarsen the intellect’, and Musonius Rufus (see on 1.47.2). In 1 chs 45-7 P. argues in more detail that the preparation and eating of animate food requires the soul to attend to the demands of the body. 63. P. probably countered this argument in the missing end of book 4: see 4.1.2 and on 4.22.7. Plutarch, The Seven Sages at Dinner 157d-160c, could provide material. 64. Viper recipes in Pliny Natural History 29.38.119-22, with the emphasis on eye medicine; see on eye diseases Jackson 1993: 2238-43, who regards the viper cure as sympathetic magic. For the keen sight of snakes, see 3.8.3, and cf. P. On Cult Statues fr. 8 Bidez (= Eusebius PE 3.11.26): ‘[the snake] is most spiritual [pneumatikôtaton] and sheds the weakness of the body; it also seems most healing, for it discovered the medicine for clear sight and, according to myth, knows a plant that restores to life’. Viper was also an ingredient of ‘theriac’, a cure-all with many ingredients. According to Galen, it was Nero’s doctor Andromachos who added viper. Plotinus, who had poor vision (see on 1.36.1) refused theriac (Life of Plotinus 2.3-5) because it included wild animal (thêria) derivatives. If P.’s source Clodius the Neapolitan is Clodius the rhetor (see on 1.3.3), he also had eye problems (Suetonius, Rhetors 29.1). 65. Probably the Craterus mentioned by Horace (Satires 2.3.161), who was also consulted by Atticus (Cicero, Letters to Atticus 12.13.1). For viper cures for elephantiasis, see Holman 1999: 292. 66. cf. 1.6.3; P. returns to this argument in 3.19.2 and 3.27.2. 67. ‘Of the same essence’ translates homoousios (the first extant use of this word is in Plotinus, Ennead 4.4.28 and 4.7.10). P.’s opponents argued that animal souls, being irrational, are not of the same essence as human souls. 68. ‘enter’ translates eiskrinesthai: this (and the noun eiskrisis) is the standard word for the soul’s entry into the body, used e.g. by P. in To Gaurus: how the embryo is ensouled 2.1 (p. 34.14 Kalbfleisch; see Festugière 1953: 3.267 and n. 1), by Iamblichus Mysteries 1.8.25, and by Alcinous 25.6 (tr. Dillon 1993: 34, with note 157-8). Alcinous also observes that immortal souls must pass through many bodies, human and non-human, and considers the possibility that the soul enters the body for love (erôs) of the body. Strictly speaking, the soul does not ‘enter’ the body, but is associated with it (see P. Sent. 1-4 on the relation between incorporeal and body); but see on 2.39.1 for the soul ‘wearing’ the body like a garment. See on 1.6.3 for the problem of a rational soul entering a non-rational being; and on 1.30.6 for the soul’s attraction to the body. 69. ‘taken away’ translates anairesthai, which also means ‘be killed’ (cf. 1.14.1). Augustine used this argument against Manicheans (Manichean Morals 2.17.58) who hoped to release the divine light trapped in the vegetable food they ate: were there Manicheans in the seminar of Plotinus? Plotinus himself asked ‘what does it matter if, when [animals] are eaten, they come alive again as different animals? It is like on the stage, when the actor who has been murdered changes his costume and comes on again in another character’ (Ennead 3.2.15, tr. Armstrong). 70. cf. Plato, Statesman 271E: in the golden age, God was the shepherd of people; now humans, being more godlike than the other animals, look after them. 71. Platonists differed on whether non-rational souls are mortal: Alcinous 25.5 (tr. Dillon 1993: 34, with note 154-5). Stoics, according to Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 15.20.6 (= LS 53W) said that the souls of irrational animals died with their bodies. 72. cf. 1.14.2. 73. ‘Egyptian’ may mean ‘from the Hermetic treatises’, cf. 2.47.1 and note; 2.36.5 for religious silence. (Cf. Life of Pythagoras 39: his teachings included ‘not

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Notes to pages 39-40 to destroy or harm a cultivated plant bearing fruit, or an animal that is not harmful to the human race’.) 3.26.12 says that we do not hurt plants or crops by taking them (cf. 3.18.2 and 3.19.2: we do not injure plants by taking the fruit they let fall or the grain which has died), or sheep by shearing them, and we share milk but look after the animals; cf. 2.13.2, we may take some honey as a reward for looking after the bees. 74. cf. Plutarch, Animal Cleverness 966a: Apollo wolf-slayer, Artemis deerslayer. 75. ‘offering’ translates prosphora, which can also mean ‘food’. 76. Herakles was said to have established a tradition of sacrifice on Lindos by killing and eating a plough-ox. The ox, a co-worker, was a very unusual sacrificial victim (cf. 2 chs 29-30), but Herakles was hungry, and evidently could not envisage eating an animal without sacrificing it. The story is told in Apollodorus 2.5.11 and Philostratus Imagines 2.24. 77. This sounds like a polemic version of the Pythagorean argument (3.20.7) that people who do not kill living creatures are less likely to kill other people. 78. cf. 1.16.2. This may be a counter to Theophrastus’ argument (2.27.1-3) that cannibalism, followed by meat-eating, began when crops failed: famine, and therefore cannibalism, would happen because animals had eaten the crops. 79. Apollodorus 2.8.3. 80. The Gadeiroi: i.e. at Cadiz. Bogos (or Bogud) of Mauretania was a supporter of Julius Caesar, then of Antony; he was killed in the Actium campaign in 31 BCE (Strabo 8.4.3). 81. Strabo 3.5.5-6 discusses the Pillars, often identified as the Straits of Gibraltar (impossible here). Poseidonius said they were bronze pillars at the sanctuary recording the cost of construction, Strabo suggested man-made landmarks. 82. 73 BCE; Plutarch, Lucullus 10, and Appian, Mithridatica 75.323-4, say that the sacrifice was a black cow, and the people of Cyzicus were making a substitute from dough when the cow took action. 83. i.e. that it is unjust to take life. P. has moved back to arguments against Pythagoras. 84. P. repeats this story in Life of Pythagoras 15. Diogenes Laertius 8.12 reports a variant tradition that the trainer was a namesake of Pythagoras, and Iamblichus Pythagorean Life 25 makes him a pupil. 85. P. Life of Pythagoras 34 and 36 says that Pythagoreans rarely sacrificed or ate animals, and even then restricted the kinds sacrificed and the parts eaten; cf. 2.28.2. Iamblichus Pythagorean Life 150 says that Pythagoras and his contemplative (theôrêtikoi) followers did not sacrifice animals, but those with greater civic involvement sacrificed sparingly, perhaps a cock or a lamb or another newborn creature, but never cattle. 86. See on 1.3.3, 1.7.1, 1.13.1. 87. How long does P.’s ‘preface’ last? 1.27.5 uses his formula ‘that would be another argument which would take a long time’, so perhaps 1 ch. 27 is a preliminary contrast between life asleep and life awake, then 1 ch. 28 begins the account of the philosopher who wants to stay awake. This account answers, in general terms, the Stoic and Peripatetic arguments of 1 chs 4-6 that life would be impossible without making use of animals, and the Epicurean argument of 1 chs 7-12 that all humans have accepted legislation, founded on utility, which allows the killing of animals. P. replies (in effect) that the philosophic life is different from civic life (and from physically demanding life) and is governed by a higher law. His use of Epicurean arguments to support the vegetarian cause (1 chs 49-55) is

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Notes to pages 40-41 perhaps also a response to Hermarchus. But there are no specific responses, especially to the ‘plain man’ arguments of 1 chs 13-26, some of which are eventually countered in book 4 (see on 4.1.2). P.’s main concern is to insist that the philosophic life requires abstinence from everything that reinforces the bond which fastens soul to body, and to reject arguments (by Castricius?) that the soul can remain unaffected by the material world. 88. ‘banausic’; it seems best to keep this word (Greek banausos, menial) for crafts which, according to philosophical tradition, tire the body and limit the mental horizons. ‘Athletes of the body’ are implicitly contrasted with the spiritual athlete (cf. 1.31.3, the Olympics of the soul); Plato, Republic 404A, remarks on athletes who sleep through their lives. 89. ‘proper behaviour’ translates kathêkonta: a Stoic technical term for behaviour consequent on the nature of an organism, so, in rational beings, dictated by reason; see LS section 59 for detailed discussion. 90. An adaptation of Iliad 18: 541-2, where the adjectives apply to ploughland. Cf. Hippocrates, Airs Waters Places 24, on the effects of rich, soft, well-watered land on human character: ‘fleshy, nerveless, moist, sluggish, cowardly; slackness and sleepiness may be observed in them’. 91. Wakefulness, literal and metaphorical, was required of ascetics: see on 1.29.4 for Plotinus. ‘Rough’ bed translates xêra, ‘dry’, which probably continues the metaphor (taken from earth) of the ‘lush’ non-ascetic bed; Nauck, following Cobet, reads sklêra, ‘hard’. Compare Galen, To Thrasyboulos 18 (V.838K): ‘Hot or cold air, food and drink, rest and motion, waking and sleeping – these are the factors that necessarily influence the body for better or worse, by virtue of their intrinsic properties’ (tr. Singer 1997: 68). 92. ‘Staying as awake as possible’: literally ‘stay awake as much as possible conceding little to sleep’. Nauck takes ‘as much as possible’ with ‘conceding little’, Bouffartigue with ‘stay awake’. The ‘country of those who are awake for ever’ is the intelligible, as opposed to the material, world: see on 1.29.4. 93. ‘Enchantment’ translates goêteuma: cf. Plotinus, Enn. 4.3.17 ‘[souls] are held fast, shackled with the bonds of magic (goêteia), held by their concern for nature’. In Plato, Republic 413C, some people acquire false beliefs because they are goêteuthentes, under the spell cast by pleasure or fear; cf. 2.41.1 on enchantment by literature. Magic is envisaged both as constraint and as delusion (cf. 2.45.1-3 on sorcerers). Note also Synesius, On Dreams p. 159.14 Terzhagi: the soul first performs compulsory service (leitourgia, cf. Abst. 4.18.1) in accordance with the laws of necessity, then is bewitched by the gifts of matter, like a free man, hired for a time, who falls in love with a slave-girl and agrees with her master to become a slave. 94. That is, his knowledge of his true self, the intellect (cf. Sent. 40, p. 50.15-21 Lamberz, cited on 3.27.11). P. uses the word gnôsis, but he does not mean knowledge by revelation: he despised Gnostic claims, see on 1.42.1. Plotinus, Ennead 3.6.5, says that the ‘purification’ of the soul from perception is like waking it up to get rid of the phantasiai (impressions, see on 1.30.1) of dreams, so that it can attend to its proper concerns. 95. Ophthalmia was one of the most common medical problems: see further Jackson 1993: 2229. Plato (Phaedrus 255D) uses ‘catching ophthalmia from someone’ as an analogy for falling in love, because you cannot explain what happened (but it comes from looking). Cold and damp were blamed for ophthalmia (Hippocrates, Epidemics 1.4) and many other problems, including general sluggishness: humans live among the cold and damp elements, earth and water. There are echoes of Plato, Republic 406CD: ‘isn’t it a disgrace to need the doctor because,

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Notes to pages 41-42 thanks to inactivity and the wrong lifestyle, you are full of damp and gases [pneumata] like a marsh, and make the ingenious sons of Asclepius label your ailments “wind” and “bloating” and “catarrh”?’ P. uses the physical ailments as images for the effect on the soul of life in the material world. 96. The ‘middle life’, according to Aristotle (EN 1095b14-23), is civic (politikos) life. It aims at recognition (timê), but perhaps really at excellence (aretê), for people seek timê to convince themselves of their own worth. Aristotle contrasts it with the life of enjoyment chosen by ‘ordinary vulgar people’ and with the contemplative life. 97. Contemplation is the activity of intellect, nous: this activity might be misinterpreted as research and scholarship (which is appropriate for dianoia, discursive thought). ‘Natural tendency and life’ translates phusiôsis kai zôê. P. uses zôê as equivalent to energeia, ‘activity’ (Smith 1974: 3), so he means that the soul must not just know about contemplation, but must live it (cf. Sent. 12 on the different life of plants, animates, the intellectual, the soul, intellect, and the beyond). Phusiôsis was perhaps suggested by Aristotle Cat. 9a2, where pephusiômenê is used for a condition (diathesis) which has become ‘second nature’. 98. Enjoyment, honour, contemplation: see on 1.28.4. 99. P. here assumes understanding of ‘return’ (anadromê also means ‘ascent’), which he will compare, in ch. 30, to return home from exile, and explain in 1.31.1 as turning back to what we originally were. The true identity of a human being is nous, intellect, which has become separated from the divine intellect because it is an aspect of the human soul, and the soul is distracted by its involvement with the body and the material world. But the human intellect can still return to its origin by turning back (epistrophê) towards the One. It can, in contemplation, be united with the intelligibles that really exist (they do not change or decay) and with the divine intellect which thinks them. (Or at least it can participate in them: cf. Smith 1974: 51 for the suggestion that sumphusis means ‘participation’ rather than continuity of substance. In this translation, sumphusis is translated as ‘joining’, as in To Gaurus 2.2, p. 34.25 Kalbfleisch). Plotinus said (Ennead 5.1.11.13-15) ‘it is with something like this [intellect] in ourselves that we too are in contact [with God] and are with [God] and depend on [God]’. Porphyry said of Plotinus (Life 8.19-23) ‘he was always present to himself and at the same time to others, and never relaxed his attention to himself, unless in sleep; and he kept sleep at bay by eating little (often he did not even eat bread) and by his consistent turning back [epistrophê] towards the intellect’. For ‘turning back’ (conversion) to the source of being cf. P. Sent. 13; for the real self and God cf. Sent. 40, cited on 3.27.11. 100. Plotinus, Ennead 1.2.4: ‘being completely purified is a stripping of everything alien, and the good is different from that’. 101. ‘free [] from impression and passion’ translates aphantaston apathê te. ‘impression’ and ‘passion’ are conventional translations of phantasia and pathos. They are not satisfactory, but neither are the alternatives (see Mates 1996: 32-41): ‘appearance’, ‘representation’, ‘mental image’, ‘imagination’, for phantasia; ‘feeling’, ‘emotion’, ‘affection’ (i.e. something that affects us) for pathos. Aristotle considered phantasia in DA 3.3, starting from the assumption that it is ‘that in virtue of which we say that an image [phantasma] occurs to us’ (428a1-2). He distinguishes phantasia both from perception and from belief (see on 3.1.4 for phantasia in animals). phantasia is difficult to translate by a single word. P. is most concerned with the appearances produced by sense-perception (aisthêsis, cf. 3.8.1), but an appearance may also be produced by memory or by imagination (see further Sheppard 1997), and phantasia is also the capacity to receive or (Osborne forthcoming) to configure this appearance. pathos is something that happens to or

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Notes to page 42 affects someone: this includes emotions and strong desires, which were thought of as coming from outside (see 1.33.6-34.7). P. is most concerned with emotions, but pathos also covers illness and bodily affliction (cf. 3.7.2), or may mean no more than ‘effect’: see further the survey by Gill in Braund and Gill 1997: 5-15. According to P., the soul by itself is engaged in noêsis, intellection, and is impassible because it is incorporeal; it is involved with perception and passion only in so far as it is involved with, and attending to, the body. See on 1.33.1, and cf. Plotinus, Ennead 4.7.8: ‘if sense-perception is the soul’s apprehension of the objects of sense by making use of the body, thinking cannot be comprehension through the body, or it will be the same as sense-perception’ (tr. Armstrong). 102. This must be the right sense, i.e. that moving away from the life of intellect (tou men) is in itself a movement towards the life of impression and passion (pros ho de). Taylor punctuates differently: ‘[the contraries  deserve to be rejected]. And this by so much more, as they separate us from a life according to intellect. But, I think, it must be admitted, that we should follow the object to which intellect attracts us.’ This gives point to the clause here translated ‘I think we may agree that it follows’ (which Nauck would prefer to omit), but it is most unlikely that P. would use kataspaô, ‘drag down’, for an attraction which he approves. (Hadot 1968: I.89 n. 2 notes that P. has a liking for compounds of spaô, ‘drag’.) 103. ‘whether intentionally or unintentionally’ translates Reiske’s supplement (followed by Bouffartigue) ê akousin ê hekousin apelêluthosi. The MSS have ê hekousin apelêluthosi, ‘whether they have gone intentionally’; Valentinus read hêkousin ê apelêluthosi, ‘have come or gone’; Nauck reads hêkousi, ‘have come’, and omits ê apelêluthosi. Reiske’s supplement leaves it open whether the soul’s fall away from intellect was by choice or in its nature (see on 1.30.6 below). ‘Inclination’ translates rhopê, which (like a balance tipping) can also imply either choice or natural inclination (Smith 1974: 1 n. 2): cf. P. Sent. 4 (p. 2 Lamberz) on the rhopê of soul to body. 104. Return to the homeland: an image shared with Plotinus, Ennead 1.6.8. 105. ‘Attraction’ translates prospatheia, an inclination involving pathos: this is P.’s preferred word for the attraction of soul to body (see des Places 1982: 125 n. 1 on To Marcella 32). ‘Recollect’ translates anamnêsthênai, which evokes Plato’s doctrine (Meno 80D, Phaedo 72E) that learning is remembering the intelligible world from which we came (see on 1.29.4). ‘Without colour or quality’: that is, incorporeal (Plato, Phaedrus 247C6: the world of forms has neither colour nor shape). Cf. P. Sent. 7 (p. 3 Lamberz): ‘the soul is bound to the body by turning back [epistrophê] to the passions of the body, and is released by dispassion [apatheia].’ 106. ‘Intellectual beings’ translates noerai ousiai. The text does not offer any connecting participle with kathareuontes, ‘being pure’. Bouffartigue interprets as ‘if we keep ourselves pure’, rather than ‘and we are pure’, presumably because of P.’s attack (1 ch. 42) on those who claimed that bodily experience does not affect our souls. See next note, and on 1.42.1. 107. In To Gaurus 12.3 (p. 50.17-22 Kalbfleisch) P. sets out the general principle that ‘aptitude’ [epitêdeiotês] and resemblance bring about union: this explains the presence of intellect in the soul. Where there is ‘inaptitude’, there is no union. (See further Hadot 1968: I.188.) But P. emphasises here an incapacity for eternal union (sunousia, cf. 1.56.3) with the intelligible: see next note. 108. ‘Depravity’ translates mokhthêria, but why is the soul depraved? Why does it not remain in the intelligible world, and how much is it affected by its involvement with perception and the material world? Plotinus surveyed possibilities in Ennead 4.8.1; see further O’Brien 1996. According to Augustine (City of God 10.30, = P. On the Return of the Soul p. 39* Bidez), P. said that ‘God sends the soul into

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Notes to page 43 the world so that, recognising the evils of matter, it should run back to the Father and never again be held by the polluted contagion of such [material] things.’ (See on 1.30.4 for the soul’s attraction to matter.) The descent of the soul makes its bad activities predominate over its good activities: in P.’s metaphor, where there is impoverishment (kakôsis) of the soil, tares, symbolising the activities of perception, leave no room for wheat, symbolising the activities of reason. Compare Plotinus Ennead 1.8.14 (tr. Armstrong): ‘This is the fall of the soul, to come in this way to matter [which has asked for illumination by soul] and to become weak, because all its powers do not come into action; matter hinders them from coming by occupying the place which soul holds and producing a kind of cramped condition, and making evil what it has got hold of by a sort of theft – until soul manages to escape [anadramein, cf. 1.29.4 note] back to its higher state. So matter is the cause of the soul’s weakness and vice [kakia]’. But the most important point is P.’s affirmation that the soul does not destroy its own essence by its production of alogia, that is, the part of the soul which is not logos, to deal with the material world. It could nevertheless be seriously impeded if we fail to purify soul and body: see on 1.42.1. Cf. P. Sent. 37 (p. 44.9-10 Lamberz): the body does not sever the soul’s union with the principle Soul, but does impede the soul’s activities. 109. For ‘impression’, phantasia, see on 1.30.1. ‘generation’ translates genesis, coming-to-be (which also implies ceasing to be), so ‘generation’ is not only the need to procreate (see on 1.41.4), but the need to sustain existence, e.g. by eating and sleeping. 110. ‘organise’ translates diarthroun, ‘articulate’, a favourite Stoic word (Tieleman 1996: 201) for clarification of language and thought: cf. 2.43.3, 3.2.1, 3.3.5. 111. Again (cf. 1.30.3) P. develops an image shared with Plotinus, Ennead 1.6.7 (tr. Armstrong): ‘So we must ascend again to the good, which every soul desires  the attainment of it is for those who go up to the higher world and are converted and strip off what we put on in our descent; (just as for those who go up to the celebrations of sacred rites there are purifications, and strippings off of the clothes they wore before, and going up naked) ’ For the ‘tunics of skin’, see on 2.46.1. 112. Rivets: cf. 1.38.3 and note. On detachment (apostasis) cf. P. Sent. 7, cited on 1.30.4, and see further chs 41-2. 113. ‘perceptions’ here translates aisthêmata: not aisthêsis, perception, or aisthêta, perceptible things, but almost ‘acts of perception’. Intelligibles: see on 1.29.4. 114. ‘affective’ translates pathêtikon, ‘to do with passions’ (see on 1.30.1 for the problem of translating pathos and related words). P. means the aspect of the soul which is concerned with experiencing pathê, ‘passions’, that affect the soul: he is interested especially in the impact of strong desires, but a pathos can be anything that affects soul or body. But how can anything affect the incorporeal soul? In Sent. 21 P. notes the association of pathos, passion, with phthora, decay or corruption, which does not affect incorporeals. But in Sent. 18 he says that experiencing (paskhein, i.e. undergoing pathê) is different in incorporeals, because the pathê of the soul are activities and do not involve change such as cooling and heating (cf. Ennead 3.6.1, where Plotinus says that perceptions are not pathê). Plotinus discusses the pathêtikon in Ennead 3.6.5: he says that an impression (phantasia) which is present to the soul results in felt disturbance to the body. The pathêtikon is associated with pathê and transmits them to the body (cf. Abst. 1.34.1), but is not itself affected, any more than the principle of growth itself grows. He then asks a question which is central to this section of Abst. (see on 1.42.1): ‘why, then, ought we to seek to make the soul free from affections [apathês] by means of philosophy when it is not affected to begin with?’ (tr. Armstrong). His answer is that the

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Notes to pages 43-44 phantasia which results in pathos does not occur if the soul is in a good state, and he compares the ‘purification’ of the soul (which does not imply that the soul is contaminated) to waking it up so that the phantasiai of dreams are not present to it (cf. 1 chs 27-8). 115. The springs of pleasure and pain come from Plato, Laws 636d, but the springs which bind are P.’s very own mixed metaphor; perhaps desmos, ‘chain’ or ‘bond’, was a dead metaphor. 116. ‘apprehension’ translates antilêpsis, i.e. awareness (grasping with the mind) of perception. On love (erôs) for that which is (to on, i.e. Being), see further Osborne 1994: 52-81. 117. ‘Additional’ translates epithetos; Aristotle (EN 1118b9) contrasts common desires (e.g. for food) with individual and additional desires. The sights are both the bait and the snares that trap unreason, which is imagined as a hunted (and unreasoning?) animal. The danger of even looking at a woman is a constant theme of Christian ascetic texts. 118. Internal turmoil prompts external turmoil: see on 1.33.1. 119. The MSS have hôs, ‘[see] in what way’ before ‘many people’; Bouffartigue retains it, Nauck follows Reiske in deleting it. ‘Emotional movements’ translates empatheis ousai kinêseis, ‘movements which are impassioned’; compare Posidonius’ phrase pathêtikê kinêsis for the ‘passionate movement’ which moves the irrational soul (Galen, Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 5.5.26 = LS 65M). The ‘kinds of noises and sounds’ are probably musical modes or instruments, such as concern Plato in Republic 398C-400C. The ‘effeminate’ people have been dominated by what they hear: this in itself is unmanly, and their ‘writhings’ are also unsuitable. Cf. 1.33.6 on dissolute dancing, and 4.20.3 and note for the effeminacy of the inner male. Iamblichus, Myst. 1.11.39 (61), argues differently: obscenity is used in religious contexts to express the indecency of matter, and it also has a cathartic effect. 120. ‘Sweet-smelling’: Fogerolles (followed by Nauck and Bouffartigue) corrected MSS ‘bad-smelling’. 121. The ‘chain’ binds soul to body; cf. 1.33.2 for pleasure as chain. ‘We have been chained with the chains that nature has fastened round us: belly, genitals, gullet, other body parts and the pleasurable feelings we have from their use and the fears we have for them’: P. To Marcella 33. Taking in foreign bodies (i.e. meat) contaminates the body (cf. 4.20.11) so that the soul has to give it more attention. Musonius fr. 18 Hense (p. 100: 17-20) commented that the pleasures of gluttony are particularly hard to resist, because they have to be fought twice a day for life. Fattening unreason: cf. 2.42.3, 4.20.10-11. 122. It is unclear which doctor (if any in particular) P. has in mind, but both mainstream and Pythagorean medicine emphasised diet (Temkin 1991: 173), and it was a philosophical commonplace (e.g. Plutarch, Moralia 159f) that food should be taken like medicine, for health not for pleasure. 123. Corporeal and therefore liable to passions (pathê): see on 1.33.1, and cf. Phaedo 83D, cited on 1.38.3. 124. Nauck accepts Reiske’s conjecture pathos, ‘passion’, for MSS plêthos, ‘crowd’, but 1.34.7 supports ‘crowd’ i.e. of passions, and 1.36.2 supports ‘crowd’ i.e. of people. 125. Probably a concession to Plato, Laws 647D, where a different question is asked: would it not be strange if people become brave by training in overcoming fears, but become sôphrôn, temperate, without having any experience (apathês) of resisting pleasure? 126. Iliad 9.524, adapted.

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Notes to pages 44-45 127. Iamblichus (Pythagorean Life 96) also says that Pythagoreans sought hiera kai alsê, temples and sacred groves, for their quiet; but according to P. (Life of Pythagoras 58), followed by Iamblichus (Pythagorean Life 35), it was only Pythagoreans demoralised by their leader’s death who chose solitude in deserted places. P. does not mean that Plato chose the Academy (also a sacred place, the shrine of the hero Akademos) because it was unhealthy and therefore weakened the body: he and Plotinus agreed that one should not be preoccupied with health, but that ill-health is a distraction (Ennead 1.4.14, cf. Abst. 1.27.1). 128. Jerome (Against Jovinian 2.9), who used Abst. (see on 4.7.2), interprets ‘did not spare’ as effodisse oculos, ‘blinded themselves’. Bernays 1866: 135 links this with Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.114, in which Democritus is said to have found blindness an advantage. Less drastically, Plotinus went blind in his final illness, and that could perhaps be ascribed to his unconcern for physical health (Life of Plotinus 2). 129. Plato, Theaetetus 173C-4A, on the ‘top philosophers’ (koruphaioi). 130. Bouffartigue marks a lacuna, but P. often adapts his quotations: what Plato says (173E-74A) is ‘measuring like a geometer “that which is under the earth”, as Pindar says, and on the earth’s surface, and engaging in astronomy “above the heaven”, investigating in every way every nature of the things that are, each and all, not lowering itself to any of the things that are near’. 131. The text here may have become corrupt because of the word-plays on knowing and not knowing and perhaps also on apantôn, ‘encountering’, and hapantôn, ‘of everything’. This translation follows a conjecture by Nauck, who reads hoti oiden ouk oiden, ‘he does not know that he knows’, for MSS hoti ouden ouk oiden, which means perhaps ‘he does not know, because it is nothing’, or, as Bouffartigue, ‘that there is nothing he does not know’. Nauck’s reading neatly parallels P.’s contrary claim ‘he does not even know that he does not know’. Whichever reading is correct, P.’s point (as in 1.39.3) is that Plato cannot be used to support a claim (made by Castricius, or by the Gnostics attacked in 1 ch. 42?) that one can be involved in everyday life but unaffected by it. 132. Plato, Theatetus 176E. 176B-77A is concerned with becoming like (or unlike) the divine: see on 1.54.6. 133. This translation (following a suggestion from Richard Sorabji) takes tis peri brôtôn diapheretai as equivalent to diapherei tini peri brôtôn, ‘foods make a difference to someone’ (brôtôn often means specifically ‘meat’). The play on words, mêden diapheromenos peri hôn diapheretai, thus means (literally) ‘having no difference made to him by the question of things which make a difference to him’. This provides a contrast with the philosopher of 1.38.2, who does not consider food as adiaphoron, i.e. irrelevant to good or bad. Cf. Taylor ‘as if the subjects of his dissension were things of no consequence’; Bouffartigue ‘debating like this is not a debate at all’. 134. ‘Taking oneself out’ conveniently has the same double meaning as heauton exagein. Cf. 1.32.1 on violent detachment, and 2.47.1 (and note) for the argument that the souls of those who die by violence remain with the body. P. himself was dissuaded from suicide by Plotinus, who said he was suffering from melancholy: this would mean that his soul was affected by passion (Life of Plotinus 11.11-15; see further Dillon 1994). 135. P. is developing imagery from Plato, Phaedo 83D: ‘every pleasure and pain, as if it had a rivet, rivets and pins the soul to the body and makes it corporeal, thinking whatever the body says is true to be true’. Plato also says that the soul is ‘bound and glued’ within the body, 82DE (i.e. it is securely fixed, like a joint in carpentry). Cf. 1.31.5 above.

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Notes to pages 46-47 136. cf. Plotinus, Ennead 1.8.14, cited on 1.30.7 above. 137. ‘Experience’ translates the verb, paskhô, which means both ‘have something happen to you’ and ‘undergo, suffer’ (see on 1.30.1). P.’s point in this paragraph is that perception does not work at all unless you are attending to it; and whereas you can be unaffected by perception because your intellect is elsewhere (cf. 3.21.8), you cannot be unaffected if you are attending to what you sense. 138. cf. Plotinus, ‘even our soul does not altogether come down, but there is always something of it in the intelligible’ (Ennead 4.8.8, tr. Armstrong). Intellect is always active in the intelligible world, even when we are asleep or otherwise not attending. 139. Bouffartigue reads ephistanta, ‘attending to’, following Valentinus. MSS aphistanta, ‘standing aside’, retained by Nauck, makes a different point: even when you are detaching yourself from the effects of perception, you are still there doing the detaching; whereas the true philosopher (1.39.5) is already detached (apostas, a past tense) because he is concerned with other things. 140. A reference back to 1.36.3; homiliai, P.’s paraphrase of Plato’s sunousiai, often connotes sexual intercourse. ‘Meat’ translates brôtôn, which can mean ‘foods’ in general, but often means specifically meat. 141. Plato, Theatetus 174C: the philosopher Thales fell into a well when observing the stars, and was laughed at by a Thracian slave-girl (i.e. an uneducated barbarian female, at the other end of the intellectual range) for wanting to know about the heavens and failing to see what was in front of him (ibid. 174A). 142. That is, the helpless philosopher is neither lacking in aisthêsis (perception) nor using logos only for contemplation (cf. 1.40.1) and not for regulating ordinary life: he just does not attend to politics and gossip. 143. Theaetetus 174CD. 144. The argument that bodily activities can be left to the irrational soul is discussed further in chs 41-2. 145. ‘Not even  two attentions’: two genitive absolutes, difficult to relate to the preceding sentence. The two-soul theory was advanced by Numenius of Apamea (second century CE), who was a powerful influence on Plotinus and his students (Life of Plotinus 17.1-6). P. reported that ‘Others, including Numenius, do not think we have three parts of the soul, or at least two, the rational and the irrational: they think we have two souls (and so do others), one rational and one irrational. Of these [sc. who think we have two souls], some think both are immortal, others that the rational soul is immortal, but the irrational not only desists from any movement in respect of activities, but is also dissolved in its essence. Others, again, think that the two souls are interwoven into the same and their movements are double; they are assimilated to one another because each enjoys the experiences of the other in accordance with their unity [henôsis].’ (On the Powers of the Soul 253F Smith lines 18-28 = Numenius fr. 44 des Places. The MSS have hôsper kai alloi ‘and so do others’; des Places follows Wachsmuth’s conjecture hôsper kai alla, ‘as we have two of other things’, e.g. eyes, ears, hands.) Plotinus spoke of a double activity of soul, and of higher and lower soul, but without conceding two souls: see further Smith 1974: 10-16, and see on 1.33.1 for the pathêtikon (affective) element of the soul. 146. Plato, Phaedo 67E. 147. A quotation from Epicharmus: see on 3.21.8. nous is here translated ‘mind’ rather than ‘intellect’. 148. ‘having intercourse with a mistress’ translates Nauck’s conjecture, pallakisi sunôn (cf. 1.39.4), for MSS pollakis ei sunôn ‘you are often being with’, which

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Notes to page 47 does not make sense. A pallakis differed from a prostitute in being the acknowledged partner of one man. 149. Plato, Phaedo 77E: ‘Try to convince us, Socrates, as people who are afraid; or rather, not as if we ourselves are afraid, but perhaps even in us there is a child who has such fears. Try to persuade him not to fear death as a bogeyman.’ Children, in philosophical discourse, are humans who are not yet rational (cf. 1.44.3). 150. ‘the necessity of generation’ translates dia tês geneseôs anankên: see on 1.31.1. The philosopher can abstain entirely from sex, but, in this world of coming-to-be, he cannot abstain entirely from the food he needs to stay alive. 151. ‘There’ and ‘here’ are used by Plotinus to mean the intelligible world and the material world. 152. Barbarian because un-Greek (see further Clark 1999): these people spoke Greek but disparaged Greek philosophy, whereas P. thought that the best philosophy of non-Greek traditions was in accord with Platonist teaching. In Life of Plotinus 16, P. says that there were in the seminar of Plotinus ‘heretics coming from the ancient philosophy’ who deployed revelations by Zoroaster, Zostrianus and Allogenes amongst others (see further Tardieu 1992; Coptic texts of Zostrianus and Allogenes were found in the Gnostic collection at Nag Hammadi). The heretics claimed (Life 16.8-9) that Plato had not come near the depth (bathos: cf. buthos, ‘the deep’, in 1.42.3, and note) of intelligible being. Plotinus wrote a treatise against them (Ennead 2.9), to which P. gave the title ‘Against the Gnostics’. But even this treatise could give comfort to P.’s opponents (see on 1.33.1): ‘we must lay down that [] one part of our soul is always directed to the intelligible realities, one to the things of this world, and one in the middle between these; for since the soul is one nature in many powers, sometimes the whole of it is carried along with the best of itself and of real being, sometimes the worse part is dragged down and drags the middle with it; for it is not lawful for it to drag down the whole’ (Ennead 2.9.2, tr. Armstrong). Plotinus argued (he knew it was controversial, Ennead 4.8.8) that the soul does not entirely descend from its relationship to intellect, and that ‘we’ can be used in two senses, referring to the undescended soul and also to the soul-body composite: hence Ennead 4.4.18, ‘the pain of this body, and pleasure of this kind, result for us in a dispassionate knowledge [gnôsis apathês]. When I say “for us” I am referring to the other soul ’ P. too insists that we are ‘intellectual beings’, noerai ousiai (1.30.6 and note), and that ‘the soul does not destroy its own essence by producing irrationality’ (1.30.7): that is, we cannot put ourselves completely out of touch with intellect. But he rejects the Gnostic conclusion that, if there is a part of the soul which cannot be ‘dragged down’ but is always directed to the intelligible realities, it does not matter what the rest of the soul is doing. 153. MSS legontes kai tôn dunasthai does not make sense. It could without tôn (‘saying that it is even possible’), but the obvious supplement is ton noun, ‘saying that intellect can be concerned with other things and leave unreason to deal with these’. Bouffartigue and Nauck suggest longer supplements; de Rhoer suggested a rearrangement meaning ‘that the man concerned with other things can leave it to unreason to deal with these’. 154. The phrasing suggests either quotation or paraphrase, but the text has not been identified. 155. ‘Thought’ translates MSS phronêmati. Bernays suggested pathêmati, ‘affliction, emotion’ (the effect of pathos), which Nauck accepts. 156. For the catchwords ‘deep’ (buthos) and ‘freedom’ [to do something] (exousia), cf. Irenaeus 1.1.1, citing the Gnostic Valentinian: ‘the deep is the source

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Notes to page 48 of all being’ (cf. Chaldaean Oracles fr. 183); and Zostrianus (see on 1.42.1) 44.1, ‘the person that gets saved is the one who seeks to understand, and so to discover, the self and the intellect. Oh how much power [exousia] that person has!’ (tr. Layton 1987: 133, from the Coptic; the Greek is not extant). In Life of Plotinus 23.24-7, P. says in his commentary on the oracle (probably written by himself) on the death of Plotinus ‘human contemplation may become better than human, but in comparison with divine knowledge it may be fine, but not so as to be able to grasp the depth as the gods do’. 157. ‘doers of everything’ translates pantorektai (taking the word to be a compound of rezô, ‘do’, but it may be a compound of oregomai, ‘desire’, and mean ‘desiring everything’). Cynics, like Stoics, held that everything except virtue and vice is ‘indifferent’ (adiaphoron), that is, makes no difference to real well-being. They aimed to satisfy only those desires which are necessary for survival and can be dealt with simply and cheaply, regarding other desires as non-natural and instilled by society; and they challenged the social prohibition of actions which are ‘natural’ in the sense that non-human animals do them (for example, incest, cannibalism, and public excretion or sexual intercourse). But if there are no social constraints on the satisfaction of bodily desire, and if bodily desires are ‘indifferent’, then just as it does not matter if desires are not satisifed, it also does not matter if they are; and P. claims that Cynics are in fact motivated by desire. 158. cf. 1.28.1. 159. The soul cannot itself resonate because it is not corporeal and is therefore impassible, but see on 1.33.1 for its close relationship with pathos and phantasia; and perhaps cf. Plotinus, Ennead 1.4.16.23-30 (and P. Sent. 18, pp. 8-9 Lamberz) for the body as a musical instrument, a lyre, played by the soul. P. uses the metaphor of resonance to show that even apprehension (antilêpsis) of pathos or phantasia is impossible unless all of the soul attends to them, because reason is needed to interpret them. ‘Directing towards it the eye which is in charge’, cf. Plato, Republic 518B6-10: ‘as if an eye could turn from darkness to light only if the whole body turned, so [the capacity for knowledge] must turn with the whole soul away from the world of becoming, until it becomes able to endure contemplation of being, and being at its most brilliant’. At 1.43.2 the ‘eye which is in charge’ becomes the eye of the charioteer, as in Plato’s image (Phaedrus 253D-4D) of the charioteer, reason, controlling the two horses of thumos (assertiveness, regarded as a good thing) and appetite. P.’s point is that reason must supervise both perception and passion, and the intellectual soul cannot leave it to unreason to attend to them. 160. ‘assertiveness’ translates thumos, the ‘spirited’ part of the Platonic soul. P., like Plotinus, does not usually operate with the tripartite Platonic soul (cf. 1.44.3, and see further Blumenthal 1996: 87), but this is Plato’s charioteer (see previous note) who drives the two horses thumos and appetite. 161. This translation agrees with Bouffartigue (and with de Rhoer in seeing irony). Nauck apparently gives up: he notes that Fogerolles printed ton spoudaion, ‘the moral man’, for to spoudaion, ‘the moral act’ (here translated ‘moral example’) and adds quae sequuntur verba non expedio, ‘I cannot disentangle the words that follow’. Taylor translates ‘On the contrary, the worthy man will so act that his deeds may be conformable to presiding reason, even in the energies of the irrational part’: he must have read kathekton, ‘checked’, for akathekton, ‘unchecked’. 162. cf. 1.41.3 for ‘the child in us’ as an image for irrationality. The ‘tutor’, the paidagôgos who escorts a child to school and trains him in proper behaviour, is reason. 163. A venturesome combination of the images (charioteer and horses, child and tutor) P. has been using. Without the imagery: if reason is concerned with its own

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Notes to pages 49-50 activity, namely thought, and if our attention is with that thought, the unreasoning part of the soul cannot engage in feeling or in any other activity, because attention is necessary for perception and feeling. But if our attention is with the childish, i.e. unreasoning, part of ourselves, and reason does not monitor the activities of the unreasoning part, then unreason dominates us and the ‘person’ is lost. (‘Person’ translates anthrôpos: cf. Plotinus, Ennead 1.1.7, ‘the anthrôpos coincides with the rational soul’.) So unless the philosopher is engaged in contemplation and unaware of the material world, his reason has to be concerned with his experience of the material world. 164. cf. Plotinus’ image of eliminating phantasiai by waking up the soul, cited on 1.28.1. 165. Residues (perittômata): see on 4.2.4. Cf. Plutarch, Seven Sages 160b: ‘it is often more of a task to use up and distribute food that has been taken into the body than it was to get the food and put it together’. 166. Greek ei mellei, ‘if he/it intends’; strictly, ‘reason’ should still be the subject, but as the sentence proceeds, ‘he’ (the person in question) must be meant. 167. ‘Chef ’ translates mageiros, a specialist butcher and cook (Berthiaume 1982) who could kill an animal in the ritually correct manner, prepare and cook the meat. Ordinary households hired a mageiros for parties, e.g. weddings. 168. cf. Plato, Republic 373CD: the ‘feverish’, i.e. luxurious, city needs doctors. Exhalations (anathumiasis): cf. 2.42.3, where the bad daimones fatten their pneuma on the exhalations of sacrificed meat. P. may intend an allusion to the Stoic doctrine that soul is an exhalation of blood (which is formed from food); cf. Musonius Rufus (fr. 18 Hense, p. 95: 13-14) ‘exhalation from [flesh foods] is more turbid and darkens the soul’. On perittôma, residue, see 4.2.4. Heavy chains: 1.46.1. 169. Barley-bread was poor man’s food, because barley grows on poorer land than wheat, and because barley flour makes coarser, heavier bread. Julian, Oration 6.198, also cites this saying of Diogenes the Cynic, but makes the contrast with expensive meals, not specifically with meat-eating. 170. Smoke and swell: Odyssey 12.219. The ‘eye’: see on 1.43.1 (and cf. Plato, Republic 533D for an equally alarming metaphor, the eye ‘buried in alien mud’). 171. The translation keeps the ambivalence of the Greek. P. may mean either that the Epicureans support a principle which may seem paradoxical to many (because the life of philosophy was usually opposed to the life of pleasure), or that many people will think it paradoxical for Epicureans to support the principle (because many people mistakenly thought that Epicureans pursued any and every pleasure: Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 5 = LS 21B). Nauck prints ‘[the end is] pleasure’, not ‘[achieved through] pleasure’. 172. Has P. returned to Hermarchus (see on 1.7.1)? As he says (1.48.1), most philosophers approved of simple available food, and of determining lifestyle by philosophy; similar points are made by Musonius Rufus, a Stoic, in his lecture On Food (fr. 18 Hense, discussed Geytenbeek 1963: 96-111). But in 1.48.3 to 1.55.4 the resemblances, both in content and in vocabulary, to surviving Epicurean texts are such that Usener counted several passages (noted ad loc.) as fragments. The style is less cumbersome than that of Hermarchus; and though P. may have used Hermarchus for Epicurean principles, he himself applied them to meat-eating. Hermarchus, on the evidence of 1 chs 7-12, was not vegetarian (though he could reasonably have argued both that human advantage requires licence to kill animals and that eating them is not, on balance, pleasurable; cf. 2.2.1). Epicurus was frugal, but was not vegetarian on principle: ‘we think self-sufficiency is a great good, not so that we should always live off little, but so that we can live off little if we have not much. We are convinced that those who least need it get the most

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Notes to pages 50-52 pleasure from luxury, and that everything natural is easy to get, everything empty is difficult to get. Simple flavours give as much pleasure as a luxurious diet, when they eliminate all the distress of need; barley-bread and water give the utmost pleasure when you eat them because you need them’ (Letter to Menoeceus, Diogenes Laertius 10.130 (tr. GC) = LS B21.4). 173. Close paraphrase of Epicurus, Key Doctrines 15 (Diogenes Laertius 10.144). 1.48.3 and 49.2, omitting 49.1 = Usener fr. 466. 174. Sections 2-3 also paraphrase Epicurean teaching: cf. Epicurus, Key Doctrines 29-30 (Diogenes Laertius 10.149). Usener fr. 456 extends from 1.49.3 ‘but otherwise’ to 1.49.4 ‘easy to get’. Necessary pleasures remove pain caused by the lack of something we need; pleasures which are not necessary remove discomfort caused by the absence of something we do not actually need. The ‘compound’ is the compound of atoms which, according to Epicurean physics, constitutes a human being; it will disperse at death. ‘Wholly’ was transposed by Reiske, followed by Nauck and Bouffartigue, from before ‘from delight’. 175. 1.49.3-49.4 except the last sentence = Usener fr. 456; the last sentence is P.’s own argument that abstinence from meat accords with Epicurean principles. 176. 1.50.1 = Usener fr. 481. 177. ‘that school’s’ translates par’ ekeinois, and ‘by that school’ translates ekeithen. (Taylor interprets as ekeina, ‘things of that kind’.) P. (or his source) may refer to the concern of the Epicureans in general, or to the concern of Epicurean teachers for their students. 178. 1.50.3 + 51.1 = Usener fr. 461. 179. 1.51.2-3 = Usener fr. 470. ‘Practises dying’: Plato, Phaedo 67E; this last sentence must be P.’s comment, because Epicureans were not practising to die, but practising to remove the disturbance of the soul in this life. 180. 1.51.4 = Usener fr. 462. 181. 1.51.5 = Usener fr. 463. The last sentence is close paraphrase of Epicurus Key Doctrines 3 (Diogenes Laertius 10.139). 182. 1.51.6-52.1 = Usener fr. 464. For desires which are not necessary, see on 1.49.3 above. 183. 1.51.6 + 52.1, including the references to meat-eating = Usener fr. 464 (but see note on 1.48.3 above); 51.6 (but not 7) and the first sentence of 52.1 = LS 21J. 184. Milo of Kroton, a famous wrestler with a notorious appetite for meat. 185. ‘these things  no harm’: a well-known quotation from Epicurus (Diogenes Laertius 10.118 = Usener fr. 62) inserted in P.’s own argument. 186. This should mean, in relation to the previous sentence, ‘many people are not like this, i.e. do not think that pleasure and sex are good for health’ (but this does not affect the argument, because ordinary people are unreliable). But ‘most people are not like this, i.e. not philosophers’ would fit the context better. Perhaps P. summarised his source. 187. P. takes the opportunity to counter the argument of Hermarchus, 1.11.3-5, that without human intervention there will be too many animals; he then returns to the question of health. 188. P. generalises one friend, Rogatianus: Life of Plotinus 7.31-46. He also refused to serve as a magistrate, even when the official escort arrived at his house. 189. Usener fr. 465 (extending to 1.54.2 ‘the boundary and measure that applies to such things’). Nauck prints Cobet’s emendation apousan, ‘when absent’, for apolausai, ‘to enjoy’. 190. ‘carried away’ translates eptoêmenoi: cf. Plato, Phaedo 68c, contrasting sôphrosunê, temperance, with eptoêsthai, being in a flutter. (The Stoics said that all passion is ptoia, ‘fluttering’: LS 65a.)

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Notes to pages 52-54 191. This sentence is translatable, but there are gaps in the MSS as follows: mê dia < > kharin hê peri hekastou < > entasis gignetai, hôsper hotô < > bios kekuêtai. Usener suggested for the first gap, for the second, ho t bios for the third: in literal translation, ‘lest through empty gratification tension arises from every thing, [tension] such as ordinary life engenders’. 192. 1.53.4 from ‘Epicurus’ to this point in 1.54.2 = Usener fr. 465. 193. Usener fr. 458 extends from 1.54.3 to 1.54.6. ‘A longer time’: Epicurus Key Doctrines 19 (Diogenes Laertius 10.145) ‘unlimited time and limited time have the same amount of pleasure, if you measure its [pleasure’s] limits by reasoning’. Cf. Lucretius 3.59-86 on the fear of death as the motive for acquisition. 194. Again, a gap in the MSS; Usener suggested eu ekhôn, ‘in order to get through everything in good condition’. Taylor has ‘in order that moderation may proceed through all things’. 195. Bouffartigue interprets toutôi as ‘for him’ rather than ‘for it’, ‘he’ being an unknown subject mentioned in the preceding gap in the text (see previous note), on the grounds that ‘assimilation to god’ is appropriate to the person, not the body. But the sentence continues with auto, ‘it’ as the subject, and P.’s argument is that even the body can achieve the good attainable for it (cf. 1.56.2 for the philosopher’s body). ‘Assimilation to god’ is from Plato, Theatetus 176B (where there is dative not genitive after homoiôsis): ‘we must try to escape from here to there [i.e. to the gods] with all possible speed; escape is assimilation to the god, and assimilation is to be just and holy with wisdom.’ Cf. Republic 613B: ‘the gods never neglect someone who is willing to make the effort to be righteous and, by practising virtue, to be assimilated to the god [homoiousthai theôi] so far as is humanly possible.’ For homoiousthai theôi cf. 1.37.4; also 2.43.3, 2.45.4, 3.26.10 and 13. 196. 1.54.3-6 = Usener fr. 458. 197. ‘What is absent’ is Bouffartigue’s supplement to ‘do not remember’ (described by Nauck as verba obscura). Those who are literally prisoners forget about anything except their present situation (but if they are Epicureans, they ought to remember past pleasures as a counterweight to present pains: Epicurus quoted by Diogenes Laertius 10.22, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.95 = LS 21T). P. now moves back from Epicurean arguments for simplicity to the life of the philosopher. 198. MSS ou gar dê nosêmatos steresthai dei hopou spoudazontes panth’ hupomenomen, ‘we must not get rid of an illness where we eagerly endure everything’. Bouffartigue neatly transposes ou and hopou: ‘where we must get rid of an illness, do we not ’. 199. Rivets: cf. 1.31.5, 38.3 above. P.’s ‘frankness’ presumably refers to his account of human relations with the gods, and of divine hierarchy, which might be considered a religious mystery. 200. ‘be familiar with’ translates oikeiousthai (see on 1.4.2): almost ‘be one of the family’. The particular gods, merikoi theoi, are distinct gods with defined responsibilities (2.37.3). The phrase ‘the god above all’ (ho epi pasin theos) is a favourite of P. (Hadot 1961: 434). ‘Incorporeal nature’ is soul. ‘Awareness’ translates epaisthêsis, which perhaps implies an awareness beyond perception, aisthêsis: in 3.15.2 it is used of animal awareness that humans use linguistic signs. 201. ‘impact’ translates emphasis (a noun connected with phainesthai, to appear, cf. Tieleman 1996: 175). The ‘inner man’ derives from Plato, Republic 589A7. ‘Holiness’ translates hagneia (translated ‘purifications’ when it occurs in the plural 1.57.2): see next note. 202. P. uses different words, mêlosphagountes and bouthutountes, which may refer to different sacrificial techniques for killing sheep and cattle respectively. ‘We’, who sacrifice but count abstinence as holiness, are people in general, not

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Notes to pages 54-56 specifically P. ‘holiness’ here translates hagneia: see on 2.19.5 for P.’s use of hagnos, and on 4.6.5 for its association with fasting. 203. ‘What can be expounded’ means ‘what it is religiously permitted to say’ (cf. 2.36.5) rather than ‘what can be put into words’. ‘I deferred’ follows Nauck’s correction huperbalomenoi, ‘having deferred’, i.e. from book 1. The MSS, followed by Bouffartigue, have huperballomenoi, ‘deferring’, which could refer to another treatise specifically on sacrifice (e.g. the Letter to Anebo?), as distinct from sacrifice insofar as it is relevant to abstinence (cf. 2.4.4); or to P.’s discussion of sacrifice in 2 chs 5-43, deferred until he has made a preliminary point. 204. Presumably human sacrifices, cf. 2.53.3. P. gives no examples of inedible animal victims, and indeed argues that humans sacrifice only the animals they want to eat (2.25.2-3). Daimones: see on 2 chs 36-7. 205. P. does not think that animals are irrational, aloga (3.1.4), but here (and elsewhere, e.g. 2.51.2) he uses the standard expression. Sextus Empiricus, who usually refers to ‘the so-called irrational animals’, sometimes does the same (Labarrière 1993: 227 n. 4). 206. 1 ch. 27 distinguishes philosophers from ordinary people. ‘Imitation of God’ translates mimêsis theou: compare homoiôsis theou, ‘assimilation to god’ in 1.54.6 (adapted from Plato: see note there). See 2.26.5 for mimêmata used of images, and see further 2.49.3. homoiousthai theôi, ‘to become like god’, recurs in 2.34.3, 2.45.4. 207. Cf. 4.5.3-5. Bouffartigue supplies an example from Pausanias 8.13.1: the priest and priestess of Artemis Hymnia at Orchomenos were required to maintain purity in all respects, and lived differently from ordinary people. Pausanias clearly finds this exceptional, and P. may rather have in mind regulations for Egyptian priests, as reported by Herodotus 2.37 and idealised by Chaeremon (4 chs 6-8). 208. For P.’s use of ‘ancient’, see on 3.1.4. 209. ‘Most learned’ translates logiôtatoi, Herodotus’ adjective (2.77) for the Egyptians (cf. 2.26.5); Herodotus acknowledges the antiquity of Egyptian religion in general, but does not say that the Egyptians were the first to make sacrifice. Theophrastus may have used Hecataeus, Aegyptiaca (Cole 1967: 160), which included an account of the Jews (cf. 2 ch. 26); see further Fowden 1986: 14-15 for Greek belief in the antiquity of Egyptian religion. The work of Theophrastus cited here is On Piety, listed among the writings of Theophrastus by Diogenes Laertius 5.50. P. gives author not title, but a scholion on Aristophanes (Birds 1354) says that Theophrastus in book 1 of On Piety explains kurbeis as the invention of the korubantai: cf. 2.21.1, from Theophrastus. (The MSS of Aristophanes have Theopompus – a common confusion, cf. 2.16.1 below – but Photius s.v. kurbeis repeats the information with the correct name.) P. signals the beginning of citations with ‘as Theophrastos says’ or a similar phrase, but he does not signal where citations end, or say how he has adapted them. In 2.32.3 he says that he has now reported the main arguments of Theophrastus, with some omissions and some additions of his own. Extracts from 2 chs 5-32 (with English translation) appear as F584A FHSG, and as L91 (with German commentary, and discussion of On Piety in S35) in Fortenbaugh 1984, where p. 264 tabulates the passages recognised by Bernays, Poetscher and Bouffartigue as fragments of Theophrastus. Fortenbaugh and Bouffartigue think this first extract from Theophrastus ends at 2.9.2. 210. ‘Beginning with Hestia’ is a proverbial phrase for ‘beginning at the beginning’ (e.g. Plato, Euthyphro 3A) or for ‘charity begins at home’, because Hestia, the hearth-fire, is the place from which one starts, and also the goddess who receives an offering at the start of a meal. 211. The MSS here are confused, but the citation by Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 1.9.7) confirms the rare word mastêr, ‘searcher’. planês, the other word

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Notes to page 56 here applied to people, usually means ‘wandering’, but Felicianus (followed by Taylor) interpreted it metaphorically as ‘in error’ (because the gods really wanted simple offerings). Bernays (1866: 167-8) suggested that the ‘tears’ were not human tears, but resins ‘wept’, i.e. exuded, by plants; this usage is found in Aristotle and Theophrastus (and cf. Ovid Fasti 1.339, ‘myrrh wept from the bark’, in a passage on primitive plant offerings without aromatics). Bernays thought the text contradicted itself about the offering of aromatics, and Bouffartigue conjectures an to give the sense ‘could have offered (only) with great effort’ (so they did not). But the text makes sense if Theophrastus meant that lavish offerings of aromatics were a late development in human history, and even the tiny offerings of aromatics found by gatherers were relatively late: the earliest offerings were of greenstuff. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 383b-384c, describes Egyptian use of resins as combined offering and aromatherapy; the Hermetic Corpus, Asclepius 41, rejects a suggestion that frankincense and spices should accompany prayers to God (cf. 2.34.1 and note). See further Detienne 1977: 37-58 on offerings of spices and fragrances. 212. ‘downy bloom’: khnous. The first appearance of shoots in a field, like the first growth of the beard or of body hair, is a visible sign of fertility. 213. In Plato’s Timaeus (77A), the gods make humans, then plants to feed them; animals develop later from unsatisfactory humans. Theophrastus may have been influenced by this ‘devolutionary’ model, or by a belief that only a few humans survive the periodic destruction of the world (cf. Plato Laws 677A-8D, where a few herd-animals also survive). Either theory would support his argument that animal sacrifice was a late development. 214. ‘Immortalising by fire’: fire burns away mortality (as in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 239), i.e. anything which can rot; parched grain does not rot. Cf. Iamblichus, Mysteries 5.11-12 (214-6), esp. ‘the gods are dispassionate, and like to see matter eliminated by fire, and they make us dispassionate: for that which is in us is made like the gods, just as fire makes all hard and resistant things like luminous and subtle bodies, and raises us by sacrifices and the fire which burns the victims to the fire of the gods’ (214.7-215.5). The visible gods, i.e. sun, moon and stars, are made of fire because it is brightest and finest (Plato, Timaeus 40B). For their relation to crops, see 2.32.2. 215. arôma means ‘aromatic spice’ (like the myrrh, cassia and frankincense of 2.5.1), and is not connected with araomai, ‘I speak to the gods’ (as prayer or curse). MSS arasomenous, ‘they will curse’; FHSG 584A follow the citation in Eusebius, who has arasamenous, ‘they (had) cursed’. 216. Another proverbial phrase (also used, in the context of primitive foodshortages, at 4.2.6); cf. 2.7.1 and note for acorns as a primitive food. 217. ‘Demeter’s crops’ are the dry crops (mostly cereals) as distinct from the juicy crops (mostly fruit) which belong to Dionysus. Barley grows on poorer soil than wheat, and also provides coarser flour, so barley-bread was poor man’s food (see further Braun 1995: 25-37); palaeobotany confirms that legumes were widely grown. Plutarch (Mor. 292bc) also says that barley is used in very ancient sacrifices. ‘The grains which people scattered’ translates tautais  oulokhuteito: ancient and modern scholars have wondered why the preliminaries of sacrifice included spectators scattering barley-grains from a tricorn basket. A scholiast on Iliad 1.449 (= Theophrastus F730 FHSG) says that oulokhutai are oulai, ‘barleygrains mixed with salt which were scattered over sacrificial animals before the sacrifice, either to show abundance, or as a memory of the ancient diet; for as Theophrastus says in On Discoveries, before people learned to grind Demeter’s crop, they ate them intact like this’. On staple foods see Garnsey 1999: 15. 218. ‘ground’ translates psaisamenon. Explanations of this and related food-

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Notes to pages 56-57 words (full discussion by Bouffartigue 1979: 67-9) are offered only by late Greek sources trying to understand them. The common factor is flour or coarse meal mixed with liquids – oil, honey, water – to make a thin or thick paste. As every cook will appreciate, what this made would depend on ingredients, proportions, and cooking methods. It could (for instance) be porridge, dough, pasta, batter (cf. pelanos 2.6.3), or the dried trachanas used in present-day Greek cookery for thickening soups and stews (cf. 2.15.1 for ‘three fingers of psaista’ carried in a pouch). See further on 2.19.1. 219. ‘Mystery’ translates aporrhêton, literally ‘something not to be spoken’. Theophrastus perhaps interpreted a phrase in the Eleusinian Mysteries (cited by Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 2.21.2) as a reference to grinding grain: ‘I have taken from the box and having worked I put into the basket and from the basket into the box’. See further Burkert 1983: 272-3. 220. ‘offered’ translates apêrxanto, which applies to a part offering, often the first-fruits (aparkhai) of a crop or other benefit. The ‘offerings of ground grain’ (thylêmata, also in 2.29.1) consisted of flour mixed with oil and wine; they varied in consistency and were used to coat sacrificial meat before it was roasted. The ‘parts of the victim’ (thuêlai) were the parts of the sacrifice which were burned for the gods; Nauck prints Reiske’s emendation thusiôn for thuêlôn. 221. Nauck prints Bernays’ suggestion krithôn, ‘barley-grains’, for karpôn, ‘crops’. ‘Cake’ conventionally translates pelanos: probably thin pancakes or griddle cakes made from fine flour, or the batter used to make them, which might be liquid enough for pouring. Other kinds of cake were called popana and pemmata: see on 2.19.1. 222. ‘Still performed’: in the time of Theophrastus (cf. 2.26.1), though P. might have believed that it continued. This procession probably occurred on the second day of the Thargelia, a festival in honour of Apollo which took place in early May before crops were ready for harvest (see further Parke 1977: 146-9). The thargêlos was either the first loaf made from the new harvest, or an offering of unripe grain and vegetables cooked together in a cooking-pot (khutros), which is the last item in the list of offerings carried in procession. The other items are not attested elsewhere in connection with the Thargelia. 223. Plutarch, Flesh-Eating 993f, helps to emend MSS eiluspoa agrôstis epi pureniôn hêgêrias: he says that mud (ilus), bark, couch-grass (agrôstis), osier-root and acorns were eaten before farming began, when people were desperately hungry. poa, assimilated to ilus in the MSS, means ‘grass’. Earth can supply minerals; couch-grass has chewable stems and roots; a fruit-stone (purên) may contain an edible seed, such as apricot kernels. hêgêrias, which does not occur elsewhere, perhaps duplicates palathê hêgêtêria, the cake of dried figs, which occurs later in the list. (The fig was called hêgêtêria, ‘leader’, according to Athenaeus 374d, because it was the first of the cultivated fruits.) Bouffartigue prints instead hiketêriai, olive-branches used in supplication; he suggests a reference to the eiresiônê, the olive-branch decorated with wool and ‘fruits of the earth’, i.e. figs, bread, honey, oil and wine, which was carried at the Pyanepsia (also an Apollo-festival). Pulses (cf. 2.6.1) grew wild as well as cultivated. Galen (VI. 620K) lists acorns among foods eaten by country people, and says that in times of famine, they were stored in pits and eaten in place of cereal crops (see further Mason 1995: 12-24); he also lists arbutus (the ‘strawberry tree’), which has sour red berries. ‘Bannock’ translates phthôis, which may be an unleavened griddle-cake. ‘Raised loaf ’ translates orthostatês, because the lexicographer Pollux, in a chapter (6.73) on breads, said it was ‘a kind of sacrificial bread’; if he was just guessing, orthostatês, which elsewhere means something upright or vertical, may instead be

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Notes to pages 57-60 the support which holds the cooking-pot above the fire. But the khutros here may be not so much the cooking-pot as the vegetable stew cooked in it (cf. ‘casserole’; a grain and vegetable stew was offered at the Thargelia, see previous note). 224. Curses: see 2.5.4. 225. ‘As Theophrastus says’ probably signals that the previous quotation ended at 2.7.2 and this is a new section of Theophrastus’ text. Bernays, followed by Nauck, Bouffartigue and Fortenbaugh, thought that ‘both of these’ referred to something in Theophrastus that P. had omitted, but the reference could be to blood sacrifice and to the war and famine which prompted it. 226. atheoi: this implies refusal to acknowledge the gods in cult, rather than denial that there are gods. 227. ‘partook’ translates hapsamenoi: P. often uses hapthesthai, ‘take’, to mean ‘eat’, cf. 2.8.3, 2.11.2. 228. Hesiod, Works and Days 134-9. Simplicius, On the Handbook of Epictetus 222c-223a, also credits Theophrastus with the story (but calls the people Akrothoans not Thoans). 229. Perhaps everyone knew from a now lost play of Aeschylus, Bassarai. The Tauroi (Herodotus 4.103.1) lived on the Black Sea coast and sacrificed shipwrecked sailors to Artemis (see further Rives 1995: 67-8). 230. Parke and Wormell 1956: II.214; the story of Klymenê is not known elsewhere. Bernays ends his Theophrastus fr.2 at 2.8.3 and resumes at 2.12.1; Poetscher ends his fr.4 here and identifies two more at 2.10.1 and 2.10.3-11.2; Bouffartigue ends extract 2 here and resumes at 2.12.1; Fortenbaugh ends here and resumes at 2.11.3. 231. Parke and Wormell 1956: II.214. The names Theopropoi and Episkopos should probably be taken as the common nouns theopropoi, delegates to an oracle, and episkopos, overseer. The animal that bowed its head to drink the water was taken to consent to sacrifice. 232. In another story, the deme Ikaria is named from Ikarios, who was taught by Dionysus to make wine; its effect was so powerful that he was killed as a poisoner (Parke 1977: 118). 233. See on 2 chs 29-30. ‘Cake’ translates pelanos: see on 2.6.2 and 2.19.1. 234. ‘explanations’ translates MSS apodoseôn; Nauck conjectured apologiôn, ‘pleas for the defence’. 235. Hermarchus (1.12.4) would argue that this is right, because justice is founded on utility; see also 1.14.3-4 for ‘plain man’ arguments about local differences. ‘Proper conduct’ translates kathêkon: see on 1.27.1. 236. ‘Abomination’ translates musos, which applies to killings too horrible to mention: Rudhardt 1992: 49. 237. Fortenbaugh, Bernays, Poetscher and Bouffartigue agree that the extract which starts at 2.12.1 ends at 2.15.3. 238. See 2.13.1 for plants, and on 3.19.2 for plant souls. 239. ‘Holy’ here translates hosia, which means in general terms ‘acceptable to the gods’. The word can be used for ‘sacrifice’, as in Homeric Hymn to Hermes 130. 240. cf. 1.21.1-2 for the objection; 3.26.12 for the response. 241. Iliad 9.154. 242. Nauck, followed by Bouffartigue and Fortenbaugh, brackets what appears to be a gloss: ‘for the provision of crops and of things from the earth is easier than that of animals’. 243. Hermione was a mountain village near Mantinea; the man’s name was Lykias (Photius = Theophrastus F588 FHSG). Ground grain: see on 2.6.2. 244. A word-play: êthos (character) not plêthos (quantity). The citation from

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Notes to pages 60-62 Theophrastus is generally (see on 2.11.3) thought to end here; see on 2.19.4 for the next. 245. This need not be a mistake for Theophrastus: Theopompus was a fourthcentury historian with a liking for moral stories (= FGH II 1B F344). 246. Hermes was particularly associated with boundaries, Hekate with crossroads, so perhaps these gods were markers of his land. For ground grain (psaista) and cakes (popana) see on 2.6.2 and 2.19.1. 247. Theophrastus wrote on Etruscans (F586 FHSG), and Meineke, followed by Nauck, suggested Turrênôn, Etruscans, in place of turannôn, tyrants; but the tyrants of Sicily were notoriously competitive, and defeated the Carthaginians at Himera in 480 BCE, allegedly on the same day as the battle of Salamis (Herodotus 7.165-6). 248. Fr. 164 Kock (II.78). 249. Dyskolos 449-51: Knemon, the misanthrope, complains that people sacrifice the parts of the victim that they do not want to eat. This seems to have been a standard joke in fourth-century comedy (e.g. Eubulus fr. 130K, Menander fr. 264, cited by Gomme and Sandbach 1973 ad loc.). 250. Plato, Ion 534C, says Tynnichos composed no other poems. 251. Fr. 322 Merkelbach-West. 252. ‘Cakes’ here translates popana: on the evidence of P.’s citations (see Subject Index s.v. ‘cakes’), pelanos (see on 2.6.3) referred to (freshly made?) batter-cakes, popanon to a cake bought or made for a sacrifice. ‘Those who have written’ may refer to Aristomenes On Ceremonies: book 3 was an exhaustive treatment of cakes, both popana and pemmata (‘cookies’, from pessein, ‘to cook’) but Athenaeus (115ab) unfortunately decided not to discuss them in detail (some information in Rudhardt 1992: 233). Aristomenes was a freedman of Hadrian and had acted in Old Comedy, a good source of material. 253. fr. 366 Nauck. 254. Herodotus 4.33-5 tells the story of Hyperborean offerings which are sent to Delos, by a roundabout route, wrapped in wheat-straw: no one knows what the offerings are. Cf. Plutarch, Seven Sages 158a: when Epimenides (see on 2.21.1) purified Crete, he should have noticed examples of primitive foods being brought into the temple. 255. 2.19.4 picks up êthos, ‘character’, from 2.15.3, and Bernays, Poetscher, Bouffartigue and Fortenbaugh agree that most of 2.19.4 to 2.32.2 is from Theophrastus. Bernays and Poetscher exclude 2.20.2, 2.28.2-3 and 2.31.2-5; Bouffartigue excludes 2.22.3, 2.25.6 and 2.31.2; Fortenbaugh excludes only 2.31.2-6. It is also very likely that P. summarises and paraphrases Theophrastus: chs 20-1, for instance, look like summary rather than citation. 256. The much-quoted inscription, which has not survived, was above the entrance to the sanctuary of Asclepius (see further Parker 1983: 322-5). The inscription uses hagnos for ‘pure’; P. here and elsewhere uses both katharos and hagnos. The words are often paired (e.g. Hesiod, Works and Days 336-7, ‘make sacrifice to the immortal gods as you can, hagnôs kai katharôs’); where there is a difference, hagneia is a state of special purity for religious purposes, often connoting fasts (see on 4.6.5) and a period of sexual abstinence. See Parker 1983: 147-51; Rudhardt 1992: 38-41, 171-3; and cf. Diogenes Laertius 8.33, on the teaching of Pythagoras: ‘Hagneia is by purifications [katharmoi] and baths and lustration [perirrhantêria], and by keeping pure [kathareuein] from death and birth and all pollution [miasma] and by abstaining from meat and the flesh of dead animals [and various other foods]’. For P.’s interpretation of traditions on purity, see 2.44.2-3 and 4.20.3.

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Notes to pages 62-64 257. Milk is not mentioned because it is an animal product, not a crop (see 1.21.1, 3.26.12): medical theory held it to be a transformation of blood. It was used for libations only in special circumstances: for instance, the Derveni papyrus (a commentary on Orphic texts; see on 4.16.6) says that magoi make libations of milk and water (col. vi; see further Tsantsanoglou 1997: 103). 258. The kurbeis were tablets of wood (or possibly stone or bronze) which could be rotated. They were set up at Athens to record the laws of Solon. Plutarch (Life of Solon 25) says that ‘some say’ the kurbeis recorded laws concerned with cult, secular laws being written on axones (see further Parker 1996: 44). Theophrastus (see note on 2.5.1) associates kurbeis with the Kurbantes or korybantai, followers of Dionysos (or of Cybele) whose ecstatic dancing acted as a ritual of purification. This may sound improbable, but Plutarch (Solon 12) also says that Epimenides the Cretan helped Solon to purify the city of Athens (cf. 2.19.3 note), and was called ‘the new Kourêtês’. The Kouretai, also dancers associated with Dionysos and therefore with the Korybantai, were worshipped in Crete; and in 4 ch. 19 P. cites Euripides, The Cretans, in which the initiates of Zeus, who were sanctified together with the Kourêtai, say that they abstain from animal food. 259. Inwood fr. 122 (DK 128); 2.27.7 adds two more lines. Empedocles: see on 1.3.4. He held that Love (which unites) and Strife (which separates) are the two forces which cause generation and decay. Kypris, one of the names of Aphrodite (she was born near Cyprus), personifies love or friendship (philia); Ares, god of war, personifies Strife (neikos). 260. ‘I think’ is probably Theophrastus, transcribed by P. (cf. 1.9.3, probably from Hermarchus): the vocabulary of this passage is Theophrastan. He extended aisthêsis beyond sense-perception: cf. 2.27.7, 2.31.3 and 6, and see on 3.1.4 for the scope of perception. (Tieleman 1996: 171 notes that Aristotle made aisthêsis cognitive, and also used it for feelings, i.e. felt sensations.) In 2.22.1-2 oikeios (see on 1.4.2) is translated ‘related’, in keeping with Theophrastus’ use of oikeiotês for ‘relatedness’ or ‘relationship’ (as in 2.22.2; see on 3.25.1). ‘Friendship’ conventionally translates philia, ‘dearness’. 261. ‘carried by  encounter’ recurs at 3.26.2: see note there. 262. For P.’s use of ‘irrational animals’, cf. 2.2.3 and note. Theophrastus here says that animals can be (deliberately? knowingly?) unjust, and also that they can be treated unjustly. Compare Aristotle (EN 1161a32-b3): ‘where there is nothing in common between ruler and ruled, there is no friendship, nor justice: for example, between craftsman and tool, soul and body, master and slave. All these are benefited by the users, but there is no friendship with inanimate things, nor a relation of justice; nor with a horse or ox, or with a slave qua slave.’ Further discussion in Fortenbaugh 1984: 267-70, and see on 3.1.4 for Aristotle on animals. 263. Sorabji 1993: 132 points out that it is not necessary to emend the text (as Bernays does, followed by Bouffartigue and Fortenbaugh) if the emphasis is ‘this [i.e. the case of dangerous animals] seems to show that we have no relation of justice with other animals, but there are other animals which are not dangerous, just as there are people who are not dangerous’. Bouffartigue thinks this is P.’s addition to Theophrastus. 264. i.e. the harmful ones. 265. The MSS here have ‘or so that we may obtain some benefit’, an obvious duplicate removed by Reiske and subsequent editors. 266. Nauck follows Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 4.14.5), who has adikein, ‘we do wrong’, not ‘adikêsein’, ‘we will do wrong’. 267. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 4.14.6), followed by Nauck, adds ‘[sacrificed] at all to the gods’. At 2.37.3 P. allows sacrifice (of inanimate offerings)

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Notes to pages 64-65 to give thanks to the visible gods, i.e. the universe and the stars, and at 2.61.2 he suggests a way of ‘treating gods like good men’; but he insists, 2 chs 40-3, that good daimones provide help without being asked, and that the philosopher does not need the so-called goods provided by bad daimones who want animal sacrifice. Iamblichus, Mysteries 5.5 (206.3-9), appears to be responding directly to this passage: ‘I tell you my own belief about sacrifices: we should never use them as honour alone, in the way that we honour benefactors, or as thanksgiving for the good things the gods have given us, or as first-fruits or return for gifts.’ 268. cf. 1.14.3 for animals that are not sacrificed. Pigs were thought to be particularly dirty: Sextus Empiricus (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.56), discussing difference of impressions [phantasiai], said that pigs prefer stinking mud to pure water. (It was not known that they lack sweat glands, so mud is a more effective coolant than water, which evaporates faster.) Heraclitus (B5; see further Parker 1983: 371-2) said that using pigs’ blood in purification rituals was like cleaning up mud with mud, but that was the point: impurity could be made visible and removed. Piglets were also cheap, because sows have large and frequent litters. 269. Nauck prints sunêtheia, ‘[their original] custom’, in place of thusia, ‘sacrifice’. ‘The Jews of Syria’ translates the disputed phrase Surôn men Ioudaioi, literally ‘Of the Syrians, the Jews ’ Unless Ioudaioi is a gloss in a passage concerned with Syrians (see further Bouffartigue 1979: 58-67), Theophrastus may have thought that the Jews were a priestly sect of the Syrians (so Stern I.10-11), maintaining purity rules and studying philosophy and astronomy like Egyptian priests. If so, P. failed to make a connection in 4.11.1, where he moves from Egypt to Jews and especially Essenes. ‘Still’ refers to the time of Theophrastus: Jewish sacrifice could be made only in the temple at Jerusalem, which was destroyed in 70 CE (cf. 4.11.1). Leviticus 6: 2-6 prescribes for ‘the holocaust that stays on the altar brazier all night until morning and is consumed by the altar fire’ (Jerusalem Bible transl.); but the priest carries away the ashes in the morning, not before dawn. Exodus 29: 38-41 prescribes a daily offering of two lambs, one in the morning and one ‘between the two evenings’, together with flour mixed with oil and a libation of wine; but not honey, which (Leviticus 2: 11) is not permitted as a burnt offering (as Plutarch realised, 672b). These sacrifices are required by God, not hidden from God. ‘All-Seeing’, panoptês (2.26.2), is usually a title of the sun, and Nauck, following Bernays, adds Helios, ‘Sun’; but Stern 1.11 notes that in the Letter to Aristeas 16 epoptês is used of God. Cf. perhaps Essene invocation of the sun, 4.12.1 and note. Leviticus also (20.2-5) condemns human sacrifice: perhaps Theophrastus (or his source, or P.) interpreted that as evidence that it had been practised (2.26.4), or had heard of the (interrupted) sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22). 270. In 4.11.2 P. adopts from Josephus the description of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes as philosophies. 271. Human sacrifice: see on 2.26.1; and on 2.5.1 for the ‘most learned’ Egyptians and their priority in religion. ‘Likenesses’ translates eikones; ‘images’ translates mimêmata, which Plotinus uses of images in Enn. 6.9.11.27. For Egyptian images, see 4.9.2-4; P. may have summarised Theophrastus’ discussion here. ‘Related and akin’ translates oikeia kai sungenê: cf. 3.25.2. 272. Scapegoats, pharmakoi, were often ugly, poor, or convicted criminals, and were described as ‘offscourings’: Burkert 1985: 82-4. 273. Two standard examples of human sacrifice (see further Rives 1995). The Lykaia took place at the sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lykaios. There were stories that human flesh was mixed with that of animal victims, and that anyone who ate it became a werewolf (cf. Plato, Republic 565d, and see further Hughes 1991: 96-107). Pausanias (8.38.5) says there were secret sacrifices in his own time (early

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Notes to pages 65-67 second century CE), but excavations in the early twentieth century revealed no human bones. Conversely, stories of human sacrifice at Carthage, to the Baal who was equated with Kronos / Saturn, were disbelieved until the excavation of the tophet did reveal infant skeletons. We do not know what other periodic sacrifices Theophrastus had in mind. ‘Friend’ (as opposed to foe) translates arthmiou, Bouffartigue’s conjecture for MS arithmeiou (which makes no sense). Nauck conjectured anthrôpeiou, ‘human’, cf. 1.9.3 (any homicide causes impurity). ‘Lustral water’ translates perirrhantêria: these were containers which stood at the entrance to sacred places (like stoups for holy water at church doors) and were carried round at sacrifices. People entering or participating sprinkled themselves with water to cleanse any pollution (Parker 1983: 19-20; Rudhardt 1992: 172-4). ‘Holiness’ here translates hosia: see on 2.12.4. 274. ‘Conversely’: animal sacrifice was a substitute for human sacrifice, which happened because food shortage compelled the use of humans as food; but animal sacrifice was also an offering of the food that humans had begun to eat because they were sated with other foods. Section 5 is a general comment on human greed (and on complicated vegetarian recipes), probably by Theophrastus rather than P. 275. Empedocles, cited 2.21.4. For Theophrastus’ use of aisthêsis, ‘perception’, see on 2.22.1. 276. The altar at Delos was dedicated to Apollo Genetor (Aristotle fr. 489 Rose). Iamblichus (Pythagorean Life 25) says that Pythagoras visited it. There is nothing in the complex Pythagorean tradition to suggest that they practised animal sacrifice as a substitute for human sacrifice; cf. 1.23.1 for a suggestion – rejected by P. – that Pythagoras taught abstinence from animals as a way of discouraging cannibalism, and see on 1.26.3 for Pythagorean sacrificial practice. Bernays and Poetscher thought that 2.28.2-3 is P.’s addition: sections 3-4 may well be a link passage by P., but Theophrastus too could have used the Pythagoreans to make a point about the sequence he describes in 2 ch. 27. The Pythagoreans, like other people, sacrificed animals as a substitute for humans, but unlike other people they did not therefore add meat to their diet. toutou geusamenoi monon, here translated ‘they ate only that’ (but not other meat), could mean ‘they only tasted that’ (but did not eat the meat), but geuesthai, like haptesthai, ‘touch’, is regularly used for eating. 277. ‘before’: a general reference to the argument of 2 chs 5-10. In particular, 2.10.2 briefly refers to the ritual now described in detail: the Bouphonia, ‘ox-murder’, at the Diipoleia, a summer festival of Zeus (Skirophorion 14, June / July) which looked archaic even in the late fifth century (Aristophanes, Clouds 984-5). The plough-ox, a valued partner in the farmer’s work and almost part of the family, is a very unusual victim: cf. 1.22.2 for Herakles as ox-eater, and the scholion on Odyssey 12.353, ‘there was a rule not to slaughter working oxen’. The name ‘ox-murder’ acknowledges unlawful killing, as the story does. The ritual seems designed to reduce guilt, both by the displacement of responsibility and by the symbolic restoration of the victim. 278. ‘the sacrifice in which he died  would be better’ translates Lobeck’s conjecture apethane thusia lô(i)on, accepted by subsequent editors, for MSS apethanen sialô on, which is obviously confused. 279. The man who struck the ox (2.30.1) is missing: perhaps he fled like Sopatros. See further Burkert 1983: 136-43. 280. Ch. 30 is oddly confused: it switches from past to present and is unclear about the people involved, and the last sentence seems out of place. Perhaps P. was summarising? Parker 1996: 320 says that the ‘families’ (genê) named are not

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Notes to pages 67-69 recognisable Athenian groups with a common ancestor and cult, and suggests that members of different genê could take on the ritual roles. 281. FHSG 584A do not count 2.31.2-6 as Theophrastan. Both ch. 31 and ch. 32 could well be P.’s summary. 282. ‘This act’ translates touto, ‘this’, by which P. means animal sacrifice (cf. 2.24.5). It is not clear whether he hopes that animal sacrifice should cease to include eating the victim (cf. 2.4.1, 2.44.1), or that meat-eating should be restricted to eating (or tasting) the victim (cf. 2.28.2). Proclus, a Platonist and strict vegetarian of the fifth century CE, would take a symbolic taste of the victim’s entrails, to express his participation in the sacrifice: Marinus, Life of Proclus 19. On the physical and spiritual effects of meat-eating, cf. 2.46.2. 283. Contrast the Epicurean argument that human interest is best served by killing animals, 1.10.1-11.5. 284. This sentence has been extensively emended. Reiske removed a first loipon, ‘for the future’, after ‘outright’. ‘heal’, akeisthai, is Nauck’s emendation for MSS anakeisthai (perhaps from loipon an akeisthai?). anakeisthai could mean ‘to refer to [those later]’, but the rest of the sentence would still need emendation. Diels suggested emending MSS tois husteron, ‘those who come later’ (and have inherited contamination) to autois husteron, ‘for them later’ (when they realise what they have done). 285. Inwood fr. 124 (DK 139), discussed in Primavesi 1998: 80-5. 286. The text is clearly incomplete, but Theophrastus had probably argued that our painful awareness of faults helps us to lead a less corrupt life and to make the offerings that the gods really want (see 2 ch. 34). For his use of ‘perception’, aisthêsis, see on 2.22.1 (and cf. 2.31.3). 287. cf. Plato, Timaeus 40 BC for the earth as nurse. 288. Bouffartigue (followed in this translation) accepts Nauck’s suggestion eisoran, ‘look upon’ for MSS eis ouranon, ‘to heaven’, which Nauck printed (interpreting, presumably, ‘found worthy to honour in heaven as we now do on earth’). Reiske and Bernays both supplemented the MSS: ‘found worthy to return to / be in heaven’. P. may have intended a word-play on eisoran and eis ouranon: cf. Plato Cratylus 396bc, where ouranos is derived from horan anô, ‘to look up’. The visible gods are the sun, moon and stars, which display the order and beauty of the universe: cf. 2.37.3. It could be argued that humans are also co-responsible (sunaitioi) when they breed and rear animals, but the sacrifice of animals is inadmissible because it takes away soul (2.12.3). 289. P. means the sacrifice of pure thought that a philosopher can offer when pure in soul and body: 1.57.3 and 2 ch. 34. 290. Nauck prints aparkhomenon, ‘making an offering’, for MSS aposkhomenon, ‘abstaining’, and presumably interprets ‘ for someone who makes an offering to make it from those foods he does eat’. 291. The ‘wise man’ is Apollonius of Tyana (see on 1.15.1). Eusebius, who cites 2.34.2-2.35.2 (Preparation for the Gospel 4.10.7-13.1), sets 2.34.2-4 alongside a parallel passage from Apollonius, On Sacrifices (Preparation for the Gospel 4.13) which has evidently influenced 2.34.2. But P. has reinterpreted Apollonius, who speaks of the first God, separated from all others, to whom no offering should be made or word spoken, because he needs nothing: all living beings (plant or animal) are affected by pollution (miasma), and we must use the best logos, not the logos which goes through the mouth, and that which is best in us, namely intellect (nous) which needs no instrument, to invoke the best of all beings. P. uses a favourite phrase ‘the god who rules over all’ (theos ho epi pasi: see on 1.57.2) for the first god. Here, the first god can be thought about; Platonists debated whether there must

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Notes to page 69 be a distinction between a wholly ineffable first god and a second god who is active Intellect (see further Dillon 1993: 101, and for P.’s position Corrigan 1987). For expressive and internal logos (logos prophorikos / logos endiathetos in Stoic terminology) cf. 3.3.1, and cf. Plotinus (Ennead 2.3.3.27-30) ‘as the spoken logos is an imitation of that in the soul, so that in the soul is an imitation of that in something else [i.e. Intellect]. So, as the uttered logos is in parts compared with that in the soul, so is that in the soul compared with that before it, which it interprets.’ On the contamination of reason by passion, see on 1.33.1. For approval of silent worship and ‘pure speech offerings’, cf. Corpus Hermeticum 1.31; 13.17-21. 292. cf. P. To Marcella 19: ‘it is not sacrifices that honour the god, nor a multitude of offerings that enhance him, but thought full of god and well established that joins us to god; for like must necessarily go to like’. For ‘made like’ (homoiôthênai) see on 1.54.6. ‘Dispassion’ translates apatheia: the worshipper who aims to be like God must be unaffected by pathê, as the gods are. ‘Uplifting’ translates anagôgê, a technical term for the raising of the intellect towards the gods, used in the Chaldaean Oracles. The Oracles are a second century CE compilation of material which professes to be the ancient wisdom of Babylon (see further Majercik 1989), just as the Hermetic Corpus professes to be the ancient wisdom of Egypt (see further Fowden 1986). P. wrote ‘On the works of Julian the Chaldaean’, and the fragments of his On the Return of the Soul (collected by Bidez 1913: 27*-44*, from Augustine) show him seriously interested in Chaldaean writings, but insisting that the raising of the intellectual soul must be achieved by contemplation, not by the techniques of theurgy which may be able to purify other aspects of the soul (see further Lewy rev. Tardieu 1978, and Johnston 1990: 80-9, for Chaldaean theurgy). Theurgy, spiritual purification by sacrament and ritual, is never explicitly mentioned in Abst., but is undoubtedly in the background. P. discussed theurgy both in On the Return of the Soul and in the Letter to Anebo, a critique of religious ritual (frs ed. Sodano 1958) which had much in common with Abst. (cf. especially Augustine City of God 10.11). Iamblichus answered the Letter to Anebo in his On the Mysteries of Egypt, and in Abst. 2 chs 34-46 there are several points of contact with On the Mysteries 3.31 (175-9). Iamblichus ascribes the content of 3.31 to Chaldaean prophets, and concludes it with praise of theurgists who repel evil daimones, give true oracles, and ‘ascend to the intellectual fire’. The ‘theologians’ to whom P. refers in his summary at the end of this section (2.43.4-5) are probably the authors of Chaldaean texts (see on 2.36.3). See further Fowden 1986: 130-6; Bouffartigue 1979: 42-7 for parallels with Chaldaean writings. 293. The intelligible gods supply food for the human intellect (cf. Plato, Phaedrus 247B), and hymns offer them some of what we understand. Cf. also Plotinus (Ennead 2.9.9): ‘[one must think] that there are other good people, and good daimones, and much more so the gods who are in this world and look to the other, and most of all the ruler of this universe, the most blessed soul. Then one should go on to hymn the intelligible gods, and then, above all (eph’ hapasin), the great king of the other world, demonstrating his greatness especially in the multitude of gods.’ 294. cf. Iamblichus, Mysteries 3.31 (176.7): ‘when these [the true gods] shine out, evil and the daimonion vanish, making way for superior beings as darkness does for light.’ 295. ‘Shrines’ translates aphidrumata, which can also mean ‘cult-images’. ‘Wise about the gods’ translates theosophoi: in Plato, Meno 81A, those ‘wise about divine matters’ are priests who understand the meaning of their rites. In Plotinus, Ennead 6.9.11.27-30 the ‘wise priest’ enters the sanctuary to contemplate the divine, not the image. ‘Committed’ (cf. 1.3.4) translates spoudazein, ‘to be eager’,

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Notes to pages 69-70 which is used three times in this chapter. P. leaves it unclear whether his disapproval applies to philosophers who also engage in traditional worship (and are therefore at risk of associating with bad daimones), or to those who invoke the presence of daimones by theurgy, the use of sacramental objects, or invite them to occupy statues by ‘telestic’ (see on 4.9.7). 2.35.2 declines to discuss theurgy, but P. pursued the question in his Letter to Anebo (see on 2.34.3, and see further Smith 1974: 128-39). Iamblichus turns the charge against people who ‘are sinners themselves and leap on the gods without law or order’ (Mysteries 3.31, 176.13-15), and thus attract the bad daimones who cannot harm the true theurgist. 296. cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 355f: Apollo is the monad, Artemis the dyad, Athena the hebdomad, Poseidon the ogdoad; and 363a, geometrical figures associated with gods (e.g. Zeus and the dodecagon). For mathematics in Pythagorean worship and divination cf. Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 93, 147, 152, and see further Shaw 1995: 189-98. 297. ‘Theologian’ translates theologos, most often used for Orpheus but applicable to any inspired poet or interpreter. P. also uses it of Homer, Empedocles and Plato (see further Lamberton 1986: 22-31), and in this context he may mean Pythagoras; but the unidentified theologoi of 2.43.4 and 2.47.1 are probably Chaldaean (see on 2.34.3). Orpheus does not appear in Abst. but may have been in the missing final section (see on 4.16.6, 4.22.7). Fire and the gods: see 2.5.2 and note. 298. ‘Other daimones’: Greek daimosi de kai allois could mean ‘daimones and others’, but P. is following Plato, Timaeus 40D, where ‘other daimones’ are in question. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 4.10.3) says that P. ‘calling Theophrastus as witness, says that animal sacrifice is not fitting for gods, but only for daimones’, but P. does not name Theophrastus here or at 2.58.1-2 (see note there). People who sacrifice to daimones may be deluded (2.40.4-5) or magicians (2.41.5) or, at best, constrained to do so for needs of the city (2.43.2) which the philosopher does not share. 299. ‘Not blameworthy’: anemesêton (as in the citation by Cyril Against Julian 9.977d) printed by Nauck and Bouffartigue for MSS ana meson, ‘in public’. For religious secrecy, here imposed on esoteric, probably Pythagorean, teaching, cf. 1.57.1. Herodotus (2.171.1; cited by Plutarch, Mor. 417c) says ‘let it remain unsaid’ (eustoma keisthô) of Egyptian mysteries. Cf. Plotinus, Ennead 6.9.11: the instruction not to disclose mysteries to the uninitiated means that it is impossible to disclose the vision of God, because the seer was not an observer but one with the seen. Ch. 37 follows the sequence of gods in Plato, Timaeus, in which the main speaker is apparently a Pythagorean from South Italy; but who are the ‘Platonists’? Plato’s successors, from Xenokrates on, discussed both the cosmogony of Timaeus and the passage in Symposium (202E-203A) which says that daimones are the means of communication between gods and humans. Xenokrates himself is a likely source for P., because he had Pythagorean interests (Dillon 1977: 37-8) and wrote extensively on daimones (Plut. Mor. 416d), but Numenius may have been an intermediary; see further Brenk 1986: 2085-9 on interpretations of Plato and possible Chaldaean influences. Another possibility is Origen (the Neoplatonist) who wrote a work On Daimones. P.’s caution about revealing this standard teaching (‘les banalités du moyen-platonisme’, O’Brien 1992: 436) might then reflect the agreement of Origen, Herennius and Plotinus not to reveal the teachings of Ammonius (Life of Plotinus 3.24-32). 300. P. has not specifically said this, but it is implied in ch. 34, and 2.33.2 says that the gods have no need of things (e.g. meat) which we do not need. 301. This description is close to Plato, Timaeus 34B: God (the ‘demiurge’,

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Notes to pages 70-71 craftsman) ‘put soul in the middle of [the world-body] and extended it throughout and even wrapped the body round with it on the outside’. But how can the incorporeal (and therefore impassible) world-soul be three-dimensional, when three-dimensionality is a characteristic of body? The Stoics defined body as ‘that which is three-dimensional and solid’, Diogenes Laertius 7.135. Timaeus 35A-36A describes how God created the world-soul from mathematical ratios which are harmonic, arithmetic and geometric, and Platonists debated whether Plato thereby implied that the world-soul has spatial extension (see further Shaw 1995: 191-3). Numenius (fr. 4b des Places) suggested that the soul is itself without dimensions, but appears three-dimensional when considered together with the three-dimensional body. P.’s Timaeus commentary is fragmentary (ed. Sodano 1964; see further Smith 1987: 749-54); but what concerns him here is that the world-soul is incorporeal and needs nothing. See 1.33.1 for the incorporeal and pathê, 1.19.1 note and 2.39.1-3 for soul and body. 302. ‘world’, kosmos, here connotes the ordered universe in which Plato’s Demiurge places the gods of heaven (Timaeus 40AB). 303. Timaeus 40D: ‘the other daimones’ are offspring of the visible gods. These daimones include the traditional gods (Okeanos, Kronos, Zeus and others, 40e41a). Symposium 203A refers generally to daimones as intermediary between gods and humans. 304. ‘Misrepresentation’ translates diabolê: does P. allude to the Christian use of diabolos, ‘the devil’, to translate Hebrew Satan, ‘the Accuser’, who is also the leader of the evil spirits who rebelled against God? Cf. 2.41.5 on the ‘chief daimôn’. Christian writers standardly use daimonia of evil spirits (e.g. Luke 8: 26-39, the story of the Gadarene swine); Augustine, City of God 9.19, claims that this usage is so well established that daimôn always means an evil spirit. 305. Presumably ‘they’ are the Platonists of 2.36.6, though the souls which have issued from the world-soul (2.38.2) sound Stoic rather than Platonic: in Plato’s Timaeus, lesser divine beings are created by the demiurge. The confused thought about daimones may come from Hermetic texts: see on 2.39.5. 306. The pneuma, ‘breath’, sometimes called the ochêma, ‘vehicle’ or ‘chariot’ of the soul (as in Plato, Timaeus 41DE), is an intermediary between the incorporeal soul and the material world. It is acquired in the heaven and is envisaged as air or fire (the starry or ‘astral’ body is a later name), but becomes thicker and heavier as it descends through the ‘regions below the moon’, where damp air, water and earth predominate. Cf. Augustine, City of God 10.11, citing P.’s Letter to Anebo: ‘he blames all daemones, saying that because of their lack of wisdom they trail water-vapour, and therefore are not in the ether but in the air below the moon and in the moon itself ’. See further Dodds 1963: 318-9, Finamore 1985, and for P. on pneuma Smith 1974: 152-8. 307. P. refers to Symposium 202E, a basic text for later ‘demonology’: ‘the daimonion is between god and mortal  [its power is] to interpret and convey to the gods what comes from humans, and to humans what comes from gods: requests and sacrifices from humans, commands and responses from gods. It is in the space between and fills it, so that the whole is bound together. All divination operates through this, and also the skill of priests with regard to sacrifices, rituals, chants, prophecy and magic.’ 308. 2.38.4-39.3 are cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.1-4, with some relevant textual differences (see subsequent notes). ‘Angers and appetites’: the pneuma, however tenuous, is corporeal. It can therefore be affected by material things and is subject to passion (cf. 2.39.3), and if reason does not intervene, appetite and anger may result in an impulse (hormê) to action.

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Notes to pages 71-72 309. ‘they are not clad in a solid body’ translates ou gar stereon sôma peribeblêntai. The verb could be middle or passive, i.e. P. could be rejecting the possibility that the souls of the daimones surround bodies, or the possibility that they are surrounded by bodies. In Timaeus 34B the world-soul is central to the body but envelops it (cf. 2.37.2); the human soul wears the body like a ‘tunic of skin’ (2.46.1); the souls of daimones should be somewhere between, but two associated metaphors suggest that P. is thinking of soul surrounded by body: periblêma can mean ‘cloak’, and Plato (Cratylus 400 BC) uses peribolon, ‘enclosure’, of the body’s relation to the soul. But see on 1.19.1 for P.’s concern to show that the soul is associated with, not imprisoned in, the body. 310. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.2) and the MSS have some divergences, and Nauck and Bouffartigue (who is followed here) make different decisions on the detail of text and punctuation. Iamblichus, Mysteries 3.31 (175.13), protests against ascribing divination to ‘a kind of deceptive nature which takes on all shapes [polumorphon, cf. P.’s word morphê, ‘shape’] and is very ingenious [polutropon, cf. P.’s many skhêmata, ‘forms’], pretending to be gods and daimones and souls’. 311. That is, they are subject to change like human bodies (Timaeus 43A); cf. 4.20.15. Iamblichus disagreed (Mysteries 5.10, 212), arguing that all daimonic bodies are in perfect equilibrium (cf. 2.39.3). ‘flows from’ translates aporrhein (for demonic aporrhoiai, ‘effluences’, see 2.46.2), ‘are fed’ translates trephesthai, as in the MSS (followed by Bouffartigue); Nauck prints trepesthai, ‘be altered’, from Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.3. 312. pathêtikon: the part of the soul which is liable to pathos, i.e. to being affected by the material world; see 1.33.1 and note. Xenokrates (see on 1.36.5) wrote of daimones who occupy the space round the earth and require those festivals which involve violence, lamenting, fasting and indecency (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 361b). 313. These passions (pathê) might be bad experiences, especially illnesses, or strong emotions such as rage. 314. Corpus Hermeticum 16.13, ‘some daimones are mixtures of good and evil’ (and see on 2.40.4). 315. The gods cannot be angry because they are apatheis: that is, nothing, including emotions, can affect them. Iamblichus, Mysteries 1.13 (43.1-44.10), says that talk of the gods’ anger is a metaphor for the effects of our turning away from them. 316. This sentence to 2.41.2 is cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.5-9. 317. cf. Corpus Hermeticum 16.14: daimones have been given power, and produce change and disruption; ibid. 18, daimones posted by the gods govern humans, and everything depends on God. 318. ‘general opinion’ translates koinê phora, which may (Tieleman 1996: 162-3) be a Stoic term for the general opinion which is the starting-point for argument. Stoics could be represented as thinking that God, as the providence which orders the universe, is responsible for evil: cf. the challenge of Carneades in 3.20.3. 319. Republic 335D. 320. P.’s account of ‘bad daimones’ is popular with Christian writers: Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.22.10-12 cites 2.41.5-2.42.3, and Preparation for the Gospel 4.18-19.1 cites 2.43.1-3; Cyril, Against Julian 4.692a-c cites 2.41.5-2.43.1; Theodoret, A Cure for Greek Illness 3.60 cites (as from Philosophy from Oracles) 2.41.5-2.43.3 ‘grows fat’. See subsequent notes for relevant textual differences. The

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Notes to pages 72-74 ‘chief daimôn’ is unexpected in Hellenic tradition (Brenk 1986: 2107-8). P. Philosophy from Oracles, cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.6, says that the ruler of the daimones is Sarapis, or Hekate; Iamblichus, Mysteries 3.30 (175.8) refers to ‘the great leader of the daimones’, and Origen, Against Celsus 1.31 (tr. Chadwick 1953), says ‘[Christ] died to destroy a great daimôn, in fact the ruler of daimones, who held in subjection all the souls of men that have come to earth’ (cf. 6.44). Sorcery: see on 2.45.2. 321. ‘impression’ translates phantasia (see on 1.30.1). Something corporeal is needed to receive the impression, and in daimones it is the pneuma: for the association of phantasia with pneuma cf. 2.39.1-3, 2.42.3, and see Smith 1974: 156. ‘Unfortunate’ translates kakodaimones: literally, ‘people affected by a bad daimôn’. 322. The quotation is from Iliad 9.500, where Phoenix is advising Achilles not to be implacable, for even the gods are pliable: ‘when one has transgressed and gone wrong, people placate them with sacrifices and gentle prayers, drink-offerings and smoking meat’. ‘Smoking meat’ translates knisê, which is both the fatty smoke that rises from roasting meat and the fat that produces it. The pneuma of bad demons is distanced from the One God both by being material and by being complex in contrast to the unity of the One. cf. 1.28.2, and 1.47.2 and note, for the soul weighed down by exhalations; in The Cave of the Nymphs 11 P. says it is Stoic doctrine that the sun is nourished by exhalations from the sea, the moon by those from springs and rivers, and the stars from those of earth. Iamblichus, Mysteries 5.3 (201), says that exhalations cannot affect divine beings, but adapt themselves to them. Eusebius and Cyril, but not Theodoret or the MSS, add ‘and bodily’ to ‘pneumatic’: Nauck prints it, Bouffartigue inserts it. 323. Like attracts like: see on 2.34.3, and cf. 2.46.2 for the likeness of bad daimones and matter. 324. cf. Plato, Apology 29DE, on lack of concern for the soul at Athens. 325. Bouffartigue adds kai kat’ auta, ‘and in accordance with them’, from Eusebius; Nauck does not. 326. 2.43.3-4 = F584B FHSG; cf. F483 FHSG, ‘Pythagoras and those who came after him down to Theophrastus say [we should] become like God as far as possible, and so does Aristotle’ (Julian, Orations 185ab). But see on 1.54.6 for ‘becoming like god’. Theologians: see on 2.36.3. 327. At the outset: 2.2.1. 328. Rules for purification often specify running, not standing, water (cf. 4.20.5). An ‘apotropaic’ sacrifice is necessarily in contact with the harmful power it seeks to avert, so that eating the sacrificial victim would make a link with that power: P. suggested in 2.43.1 that all animal sacrifices link the sacrificer with bad daimones. On P.’s assimilation of traditional purity rules to hagneia, holiness, see 2.19.5. 329. ‘Holy in advance’ translates prohagneuein, i.e. to be in a state of purity before starting the ritual. In 2.44.3-4, and in ch. 45, ‘holy’ and ‘holiness’ translate hagnos, hagneia. 330. Sorcerers (goêtai) were blamed for trying to constrain divine powers, usually for worldly purposes, whereas theurgists claimed to use similar techniques of ritual and invocation to purify their souls with the freely given help of the divine powers. See further Fowden 1986: 79-87 for the overlap, and cf. Augustine, City of God 10.9: ‘they call it magia, or the more repellent name of goetia, or the more honourable name of theurgy’. Magia (or magika, the teachings of the Magi, see 4.16.1) might pass as oriental wisdom, but goêteia, ‘sorcery’ or ‘enchantment’ is always a hostile description (cf. 1.28.1, 1.43.1 for the enchantments of the material

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Notes to pages 74-75 world that bewitch the soul). Augustine also says (City of God 10.21) that P. mentions a belief (not his own) that a good spirit cannot enter someone until the evil spirit has been placated. Iamblichus (Myst. 3.31, 178.11) says that bad spirits cannot harm a good theurgist. 331. Again, a common religious rule: white clothing showed that there was no ritual contamination by blood, and its simplicity prevented an arrogant display of human wealth. Pythagoreans, according to Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 153, always wore white, so that they were always ready to approach the gods. 332. ‘Skin tunic’: Greek khitôn dermatinos, which could also mean ‘leather tunic’. The body as garment of the soul is a common philosophical image: cf. Plato, Gorgias 523C, the body which (in life) hides scars on the soul. In 1.31.3 P. uses the image of many tunics, ‘next to the skin tunic’, which conceal the soul and which must be shed before the spiritual Olympics. He may also have known Genesis 3: 21, in which Adam and Eve, cast out of Paradise, make themselves skin tunics, and its allegorical interpretation (by Philo and Origen) as a reference to the human body. See further Pépin 1955; Copenhaver 1992: 147; Bouffartigue 1979: 37-41. 333. Demonic effluences, 2.39.2; bad daimones are ‘related’ (on oikeiotês, see 3.25.2) to human flesh and blood in its skin tunic because their pneuma, like the human body, is liable to generation and corruption, and because they are attracted to matter (as they are to the flesh and blood of sacrificial victims, 2.42.3). 334. cf. 1.38.2. P. probably has in mind the passage of the Chaldaean Oracles (see 2.36.3 and note on ‘theologians’) which is the starting-point for Plotinus’ discussion of ‘withdrawal’ (Ennead 1.9): ‘do not take out [your soul], lest it go out taking something with it’ (see further Dillon 1994). ‘The Egyptian’ is Hermes Trismegistos (see Festugière 1936, with relevant passages from the Hermetic tractate Asclepius); not Chaeremon (see on 4.6.1) who is ‘the Stoic’ not ‘the Egyptian’, and not Plotinus, who came from Lykopolis in Egypt and who talked P. out of suicide (Life of Plotinus 11.11-15) but is never referred to as ‘the Egyptian’. (P. was called ‘the Phoenician’ by others, but never identifies himself as such, and never exploits his relationship with Plotinus as the alliance of Egyptian and Phoenician, the two most ancient forms of non-Greek wisdom. See further Clark 1999.) 335. The irrational (alogos) soul may be that of a non-human animal (see 2.2.3 and note for P.’s use of alogos) or that of a human who fails to have reason in control (see further Smith 1974: 64-8 for P.’s opinion on the survival of the non-rational soul). The soul, insofar as it is rational, is akin to God, but the more it is affected by pathê, the more it is akin to the body (see on 1.30.7). So instead of rejoicing in its release (cf. 1.19.2), it remains with the body: cf. Plato, Phaedo 81CD, for souls which are visible because they still share in the visible. In Phaedo 82E the body is a barrier (eirgmos) between the soul and reality, but the soul is not barred (dieirgetai oudamôs) from the body which draws it down. 336. Divinatory moles are not attested, but the mole would be a natural choice because it finds its way in darkness. (Pliny, Natural History 30.84, says that the Magi thought sprinkling with mole-blood cured delirium.) Ravens and falcons bring messages from Apollo, 3.5.5. For divination by eating parts of animals, see on 3.4.1. 337. In Marcella 16 P. cites a Pythagorean saying: ‘the wise man alone is priest, alone is dear to the gods, alone knows how to pray’. Cf. 2.3.2 for the special lifestyle of the priest, and 2.34.2 for offerings to the god who rules all. P. advocates solitude and quiet in 1.36.1, but here he refers rather to disturbance from irrational souls and daimones (2.47.3). ‘Alone to the alone’: the last words of the Enneads of Plotinus (6.9.11) as P. edited them (but not specifically Plotinian: cf. Numenius fr.

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Notes to pages 75-76 2 des Places, ‘to converse with the good alone with the alone’). ‘Wary’ translates eulabês: that is, the philosopher is alert to the demands of the body in the material world. But P. might also mean that he feels religious awe at the workings of nature; for nature as ordering power, cf. 2.53.2. 338. pantakhothen sôizôn heauton, here translated ‘protecting himself in all respects’, probably has the further meaning ‘rescuing his [true] self from [dispersal in] all directions’ (Hadot 1968: I.91). 339. ‘Cult-statue’ translates agalma. ‘His’: Nauck prints autou, i.e. ‘of the god’ (cf. the Egyptian priests who constantly attend to the cult-statues, 4.6.6); Bouffartigue prints hautou, i.e. ‘his own’: cf. Plotinus, Ennead 1.6.9.13, ‘do not cease sculpting your own statue [agalma]’, i.e. making yourself into an image of the divine. This is an adaptation of Plato, Phaedrus 252D: ‘Everyone chooses his love, according to his disposition, from among the beautiful, and, as if the beloved were a god to him, sculpts and adorns him like a cult-statue to honour him and celebrate his rites. So those who belong to Zeus seek for a beloved who is like Zeus in soul, and consider whether he is naturally a philosopher and leader, and when they have found him and fallen in love, they do everything to make him be like that.’ For humans as an image, eikôn, of God, see on 3.27.2. 340. ‘Diviners’ translates hieroskopoi (the Greek word related to Latin haruspices). It is difficult to show that, in classical Greece, menstruation was considered to be polluting (Dean-Jones 1994: 234-6; Parker 1983: 100-3); but other varieties of bloodshed, including childbearing, certainly were. For later Platonist philosophers, menstruation also had all the negative connotations of reproduction and sexual desire (see 4.20.3, 4.20.6). 341. Presumably because we would die if we did not eat (4.20.13), not because plants die: 2.13.1 points out that plants do not die when their fruit is taken. ‘converse with’ translates ‘be a homilêtês of ’: almost ‘confidant’, cf. 2.52.4 and note; Plato, Laws 671D, cited 2.61.4; and Numenius fr. 2 des Places, ‘converse with the good, alone with the alone’ (homilêsai tôi agathôi monôi monon). 342. ‘Barbarians’ here has the traditional sense of ‘non-Greek peoples’ (contrast the barbarians of 1.42.1 who reject their Greek philosophical heritage). Strabo (3.154) says that Lusitanians divine from human victims, and uses the word splankhneuesthai (splankhna means ‘entrails’). He also says (4.198) that Gauls divine from the death-struggle of a human victim, and Albanians (11.503) from the way the victim falls. The charge of divination from human entrails is also brought against witches and sorcerers, especially when the victim is a child: e.g. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 7.11. The jurist Paul (a later contemporary of P.), in his interpretation of the law on murderers and poisoners, refers to ‘sacrificing human beings and taking auspices with human blood’ in the context of magical rites (Opinions 5.23.14-19). 343. See 2.2.3 and note for P.’s use of ‘irrational animals’. 344. cf. 4.9.7 for the liberated soul. P. pursued the question of divination in the Letter to Anebo (see on 2.34.3): Iamblichus responds in detail in Mysteries 3, especially 3.3 (106-8) on the soul released in sleep, and 3.15-16 (135-8) on divination using animals and birds. 345. That is, those who have neglected their true selves, the intellect which can be raised towards God, for the uncertainty of the external world. 346. cf. Augustine, City of God 10.11, citing P.’s Letter to Anebo: ‘those whose conversation with the gods was in order to trouble the divine intellect about finding a runaway slave, buying some land, a marriage or a business deal or something of the kind, have cultivated wisdom in vain.’ 347. ‘As we say’: 2.49.1. ‘Entrails’: the part of an animal which reveals the divine

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Notes to pages 76-77 will, so for humans, the intellect. ‘Intimate of great Zeus’: Odyssey 19.178, there said of King Minos; Plotinus cites it in Ennead 6.9.7 in relation to union with the One. ‘Intimate’ translates oaristês. 348. ‘House-slave’ translates oiketês, a trusted member of the household; P. said that Castricius behaved like one to Amelius, see on 1.1.1. 349. Plato, Timaeus 30B4-6, ‘[God] reasoned that in all visible things, no whole without intellect would be finer than one with intellect, and that nothing could have intellect without soul. So, by this reasoning, God made the All by putting intellect in the soul and soul in the body, so as to achieve a work which was finest and best.’ ‘That which is most honoured in all’ is intellect, in the world-soul and the individual soul: ‘in all’ here translates en tois holois, which presumably means ‘in all things taken together’ (whereas en pasi would mean ‘in everything’). ‘In the universe’ translates en tôi holôi. 350. Nature (phusis) is of the intellect (noera) when considered as an ordering power, rather than as the nature of individual material beings. P.’s philosopher understands the workings of nature (2.49.2). Perhaps 2.53.1-2 alludes to the daimonion who warned Socrates of danger; Socrates was ridiculed (cf. 2.53.2) by his fellow-Athenians. 351. 2.53.3 = F584C FHSG; but P. does no more than mention Theophrastus on human sacrifice (2.27.2). P. returns here to the argument of 2 chs 2-3. Lists of human sacrifices occur in other authors, including Plutarch and Clement of Alexandria; P.’s list is exploited by Eusebius and Theodoret. P.’s source is not known, unless it was Pallas (2.56.3) providing examples of sacrifices now abolished. See further Hughes 1991: 115-30. For human sacrifice contrasted with bloodless sacrifice and abstinence, cf. Plato, Laws 782C: ‘we see that even now, for many people, the practice of human sacrifice survives; conversely, we hear of others that they did not venture to taste even cattle, and that their sacrifices to the gods were not animals, but cakes and fruits soaked in honey and other such pure sacrifices, and that they abstained from meat on the grounds that it is not holy to eat it or to stain the altars of the gods with blood ’ 352. This sacrifice is otherwise unknown, but Kronos and Artemis receive human sacrifice in other myths. 353. This story seems confused: perhaps it came from Asclepiades of Cyprus, cited 4.15.2 for a story of the earliest animal sacrifices. Kekrops was among the first kings of Athens, and his daughter Agraulos (or Aglauros) was an Athenian heroine. Neither has any known connection with the Homeric hero Diomedes, a protégé of Athena, and none of the three has any connection with Cyprus. Has Salamis in the Saronic Gulf been conflated with Salamis in Cyprus? 354. Diphilos (‘dear to Zeus’) is otherwise unknown. There are various candidates for Seleukos the theologian, who is also mentioned together with Manetho in Iamblichus, Mysteries 8.1 (261), but none can be securely identified (see further Hughes 1991: 126). 355. Manetho (FGH 609), an Egyptian priest of the early third century BCE, wrote extensively in Greek on Egyptian religious tradition (see further Fowden 1986: 53-4). 4.7.3 discusses the selection of calves. 356. Euelpis is not otherwise known. ômadios alludes to sacrifices of raw (ômos) meat, which connoted savagery (cf. 1.13.2-3, and 4 ch. 19). 357. Apollodorus the mythographer (first century CE): FGH 244 F125. 358. ‘By vote’ translates epipsêphizontes, as in the MSS (and Bouffartigue); Nauck prints Lobeck’s conjecture epiphêmizontes, ‘devoting’. Philo of Byblos (FGH IIIC 790) was a scholar of the late first century to early second century CE who claimed to have translated the ancient (pre-Homeric) history of Sanchuniathon.

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Notes to pages 77-80 See further Baumgarten 1981, esp. 247-9: he sees a reference here to child sacrifice as at Carthage (2.27.2), a Phoenician foundation. P., as usual, does not identify himself as Phoenician (see on 1.14.4, 2.47.1). 359. Istros (FGH 344 F48) wrote in the third century BCE. The Kouretes (see on 2.21.1) guarded the infant Zeus from his father Kronos, who had swallowed all his children by Rhea; that story could have been used to explain the sacrifice of substitute children. 360. P. cites Pallas again at 4.16.4; he is otherwise unknown. ‘In the reign of the emperor Hadrian’ is here taken to refer to the date of Pallas, not (as Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 4.15.6) to the date by which Pallas said human sacrifice was (almost) abolished. Pallas perhaps said vaguely ‘human sacrifice is abolished in our time’. 361. Sections 4-8 look like summaries, perhaps from Pallas. Girls replaced by deer or other animals (4) were usually sacrificed to Artemis: perhaps the goddess of Laodicea was wrongly identified. Plutarch, Moralia 552a, says it was Gelon who stopped Carthaginian sacrifice (5). Turcan 1975: 41 suggests that the Doumatenoi (6) came from Dumaitha in Arabia and the ‘altar used as an idol’ is the baetyl of Dusares. Phylarchus (FGH 81 F80, third century BCE) appears to be generalising from myth. Herodotus mentions Thracian (5.5, 9.119) and Scythian (4.62) sacrifices; the daughter of Erechtheus died to save the state (Apollodorus 3.15.4). 362. At the Feriae Latinae, a festival of Jupiter Latiaris (P. uses the Greek form) as common god of the Latins, from the fourth century BCE, a white heifer was sacrificed and gladiatorial games were held. If the blood of those who died was offered to Jupiter, this could be interpreted as ‘people die to honour the god’. Christian apologists used this example: see further Rives 1995: 75-6. 363. ‘Holy’ translates hosion (‘religiously acceptable’). The story is told by Polybius 1.84-5, but he does not link the trampling by elephants to the cannibalism. 364. See on 2.36.5. 365. Nauck fr. 118, author unknown; also cited by Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 7.6.34.3, in a similar cluster of quotations. 366. Again, author unknown (fr. 372K; III.478). P. was probably using an anthology. 367. 59.1-61.2 = F584D FHSG. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 4.14.8-9) cites 2.60.3-61.1, prefaced by ‘and later on’, after a sequence of citations from P. on animal sacrifice ‘calling Theophrastus as witness’. Sacrifice ‘according to ancestral tradition’ was a standard response of the Delphic oracle, usually interpreted as ‘according to local practice’. 368. This summarises the argument of 2.5.3. 369. Iliad 1: 315-6; P. uses it as a link to his next theme, extravagant sacrifice. 370. The standard word for superstition, deisidaimonia, literally means ‘fear of daimones’. 371. cf. 2.15.2 (character), 2.34.2 (offering of thoughts). 372. Fr 131K (III.434), author unknown. 373. Laws 716D, 717A; but 2.61.6 draws on Theaetetus 173-4 (cited 1.36.3), and perhaps on the example of Socrates, for the philosopher who does not join in bad customs. Laws emphasises general conformity with (good) religious practice. 374. Republic 494A: ‘it is impossible for the multitude to be philosophical, so it is inevitable that philosophers will be blamed by them.’ 375. Syrians, 4.15.5; Hebrews, 1.14.4 (where Phoenicians also abstain from pork), 4.11.1; Phoenicians and Egyptians, 2.11.2; Egyptians, 4.7.3. P. is generalising from oppression of the Jews, cf. 4.11.1.

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Notes to page 80 376. Adapted from Plato, Phaedo 67E, ‘practising to die’; but ‘dying to something’ is not Platonic idiom. 377. Paraphrase of Plato, Philebus 67B, where the animals are oxen and horses (hogs and he-goats suggested greed and lust). 378. cf. 3.26.9: ‘justice lies in harmlessness’. Harmlessness is a central theme of P.’s (brief) summary and peroration in 3 chs 26-7. 379. cf. the rapid summary in 1.4.1-3, where ‘our opponents’ are clearly Stoics rather than Peripatetics; here also P. proceeds at once to Stoic arguments (3.2.1). ‘Like us’ translates homoia. Stoics held that ‘we have no relation of justice with the other animals, because of unlikeness [anomoiotês]’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.129, citing Chrysippus, On Justice book 1 and Poseidonius, On Proper Conduct book 1). The ‘unlikeness’ is that they are not rational, so even though both humans and animals have soul, animal perceptions and impulses are different (see on 3.1.4). Peripatetic arguments are not so clear-cut. Aristotle said, in an aside (EN 1161b13), ‘there is no friendship with inanimate things, nor a relation of justice; nor with a horse or ox, or with a slave qua slave, for there is nothing in common [koinon]: the slave is an animate tool, the tool is an inanimate slave’. But his views on animals were more varied than this suggests (see next note, and Brink 1955: 130-9), and his successor Theophrastus argued that there is much in common between humans and animals: 2.22.2, 3.25.3. For P.’s use of the standard phrase ‘irrational animals’, see on 2.2.3. 380. ‘Pythagorean’ because according to Pythagorean teaching on reincarnation, a rational soul may be joined with an animal body (cf. 3.8.9, 3.26.1), or even with a plant (see on 1.6.3). P. does not here commit himself to a belief that plants have rational souls (see on 3.19.2): his wording allows for a soul which does not share in perception and memory and therefore is not rational. He did not share the Pythagorean belief in the transmigration of souls (see on 1.6.3). Perhaps he mentions Pythagoras here as a reproach to his former follower Castricius, perhaps also to signal his own Pythagorean commitment (see on 1.1.1). 381. Perception and memory strongly suggest that animals are aware of themselves and the world, and are not operating simply by stimulus and response. But would P.’s opponents, who are Peripatetics and Stoics, agree that perception and memory prove animals to be rational? P. makes much use of Aristotle in this book, but he relies on HA 8 (9), which is unusually sympathetic to animals and has not always been accepted as authentic. Aristotle often makes a distinction between humans, the only rational animal, and the rest, but sometimes he at least allows the implication that animal perception includes beliefs and judgements (see further Fortenbaugh 1971; Sorabji 1996). He distinguished plants, which have only nutritive soul (they grow and decay but are not self-moving), from animals, which have perception and impulse and are self-moving. He said (Metaph. 980b19-28) that ‘animals are by nature born with perception, and from perception some do not acquire memory, but others do; this makes them more intelligent (phronimôtera) and capable of learning than those that cannot remember. [They must also be able to hear.] Now other animals live by impressions (phantasia) and memories, and have a little experience, but humans live by skill [technê, a universal concept formed from many experiences] and reasoning.’ (For instance, some animals can remember ‘eat these foods if you are ill’, but none can generalise ‘eat a light diet if you are ill’. See further Frede 1990: 238-9.) This supports P.’s claim that Aristotle said that animals with keener perceptions are more intelligent (phronimôtera, see on 3.8.6), but Aristotle conceded only practical wisdom and was cautious about any intellectual activity in animals. In DA 434a6-7 he distinguished two kinds of phantasia (impression, see on 1.30.1). Phantasia prompts movement; animals

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Notes to page 80 have perceptive phantasia, but only rational animals have deliberative phantasia. He also said that animals can remember, but only humans can remind themselves [anamimnêiskesthai] (Mem. 453a8-14). So perception and memory would not prove rationality, and Aristotle seems not to allow that animals can reflect on their experience or make choices about their actions. This is also the Stoic position. They said that all soul has perception and impulse (so plants have only phusis, ‘nature’ not soul), but animal impression (phantasia, see on 3.2.1 and 3.3.2) and impulse (hormê) are different from human phantasia and impulse. Human impressions are thoughts: that is, they have a propositional content (e.g. ‘this pain is bad’) to which we give or refuse assent, whereas animal impressions are not propositional, and animals do not judge them or assent to them. Similarly, in rational animals ‘reason supervenes as the craftsman of impulse’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.86 = LS 57A5): that is, humans can regulate impulse in accordance with reason. Animals cannot, therefore, have emotions, which involve assent to a judgement. But if animals cannot judge their impressions, how do they recognise what is appropriate [oikeion] or alien for them (3.21.7, 3.22.1)? Perhaps (Labarrière 1993) Stoics found different solutions, some acknowledging that perception and impulse alone do not explain animal behaviour, others extending the content of ‘perception’. P. argues for a ‘more or less’ not an ‘all or nothing’ approach (3.7.1, 3.8.7): animals are less rational than humans, but not non-rational. See further Sorabji 1993: 7-77; Osborne forthcoming. 382. Who are ‘the ancients’ (palaioi)? P. uses palaios of Aristotle (fourth century BCE: 3.9.5) and Empedocles (fifth century BCE: 3.27.3), but also of those in the distant past who told myths of Melampous or Tiresias, contrasted with ‘those of our own or our fathers’ time’ such as Apollonius of Tyana (late first century CE: 3.3.6). In Sent. 20, when discussing the opinions of the arkhaioi, ‘those of old’, on the properties of matter, he seems to mean Plato and/or later Platonists. Sextus Empiricus (second century CE) refers to the Stoic Chrysippus (third century BCE) as an ‘old’ [arkhaios] author (Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.69; this work is translated and discussed in Annas and Barnes 1985 and Mates 1996). Sextus draws on material also used by P. (Abst. 3.2.1-18.2), and Chrysippus would be a good candidate for P.’s ‘ancients’ (see on 3.18.1). But this and other parallels (tabulated by Patillon 1979: 143) are not strong enough to prove a common source for P. and Sextus, rather than a common body of argument and example (see Crystal 1998: 264 for Plotinus’ interest in Sextus). Sextus organises his material differently from P. He offers (1.40-61) the Skeptic argument that the bodily differences of animals must give them different sense-impressions, and who is to say which phantasia is correct? He then borrows from Aenesidemus (1.62-77), explicitly as a joking challenge to the Dogmatists (i.e. the Stoics, 1.65), a comparison of human and ‘non-rational’ animals, arguing (1.62-72) that dogs manifest internal reason in that they can choose and obtain what is appropriate [oikeios] for them and avoid what is troublesome, recognise and deal with their pathê, and show virtue; then, briefly, (1.73-7) argues that the complexity of animal utterance, especially in birds, shows expressive reason. This last section is closest to P., though much more concise. Similarly, Philo, On Animals (first century CE) has some points in common with P., but almost all his examples are different, and his aim is first to present, then to refute, the case for animal reason. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.18.6, calls this text Alexander: or that irrational animals have reason. It survives only in Armenian, tr. Terian 1981.) 383. This paragraph deploys a range of Stoic technical terms. ‘Internal’ conventionally translates endiathetos, contrasted with ‘expressive’, prophorikos (but Stoics used diathesis for a permanent disposition, cf. 3.3.1, so ‘dispositional’ might

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Notes to pages 80-81 be better). Chrysippus said that ‘thought (dianoia) is internalised discourse, discourse is externalised thought’, but he may not have used the technical terms ‘internal’ and ‘expressive’ logos (Tieleman 1996: 205). For ‘correct’ (orthos) logos see 3.2.3. logos is untranslated because P.’s argument depends on the double sense ‘reason’ and ‘word’ (i.e. intelligible speech). If an animal has logos in the sense that it can talk, it must have logos in the sense that it is rational, because in order to talk it must assess its experience, convey that experience by signs, and understand the signs made by another; conversely, if it cannot do these things, its experience must be fundamentally different from human experience. alogos, ‘lacking logos’ (see 3.2.4), may mean ‘irrational’ or ‘non-rational’. Chrysippus distinguished nonrationality, not having logos, from irrationality, having logos but not obeying it: Galen, Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 4.2.10-27 (= LS 65J), citing Chrysippus On Passions. 384. ‘State exactly’ translates diarthroun, ‘articulate’ or ‘define’ (see on 1.31.2). On kinds of logos, cf. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 8.275-6: ‘they [the Stoics] say that it is not uttered speech [logos prophorikos] but internal speech [logos endiathetos] by which man differs from non-rational animals, for crows and jays and parrots utter articulate sounds [enarthrous phônas]. Nor is it by the merely simple impression [phantasia] that he differs (for they too receive impressions), but by impressions produced by inference and combination. This amounts to his possessing the conception of “following” and directly grasping, on account of “following”, the idea of sign. For sign itself is of the kind “If this, then that.” Therefore the existence of signs follows from man’s nature and constitution.’ (tr. LS 53T; for ‘crows’, read ‘ravens’). See below on 3.4.4, 3.6.3; and see further Labarrière 1997. 385. ‘The Stoics hold that there is nothing in between virtue and vice’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.127). A perfectly wise human would always be perfectly rational, unshaken in his knowledge of true good. Anyone who has not reached this perfection is not good, however far they have progressed: you can drown an arm’s length below the surface, you are blind until you see (Plutarch, Mor. 1063ab). Cf. 3.22.8-23.2. 386. ‘Self-love’ translates philautia: Aristotle (EN 1168a29-30) says that philautos is a pejorative term for someone who loves himself more than others. Philo On Animals uses it twice (10, 15). 387. ‘Groundwork’ translates hupobolê, which also occurs (linked with sperma, ‘seed’) in fr. 2 (Hense) of the Stoic Musonius. Seneca (Letter 108.8) likewise has omnibus enim natura fundamenta dedit semenque virtutum, ‘nature gave everyone the groundwork and seed of virtues’. 388. phônê and related words are translated ‘voice’, except in a few instances (noted ad loc.) where natural English requires ‘language’. phthegma and related words are translated ‘speech’, even though this prejudges the question whether the utterance of sound expresses thought. glôtta, translated ‘tongue’ in 3.3.2-3 and 3.5.2, can also mean ‘language’ as in 3.3.4 (and cf. Clement of Alexandria cited on 3.4.6). Both Aristotle and the Stoics distinguished human logos from the sound, voiced or unvoiced, produced by other animals. In DA (420b6) Aristotle said that phônê is ‘the sound of an animate creature’ and also (ibid. 29-34) that it must involve an impression, for ‘voice is a sound that signifies’; in Pol. (1253a10-18) he said that animals have phônê for conveying to each other their perceptions of pain and pleasure, but only humans have logos, which is for showing what is right and wrong. He discussed animal voice in HA 4.9 (535a26-536b23), distinguishing phônê, voice, and dialektos, articulate voice, neither of which can be produced without a tongue, from psophos, ‘sound’, which can be produced by other parts of

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Notes to pages 81-82 the body. Birds have phônê, and those with broad or thin tongues have more dialektos; quadrupeds have phônê but only humans have dialektos. He did not, in HA, discuss meaning. Stoics distinguished phônê, which includes voiced sound, from lexis, which is articulate, and lexis from logos in that logos always has meaning, whereas lexis includes nonsense, e.g. ‘blituri’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.57 = LS 33A; LS use ‘utterance’ for phônê and ‘speech’ for lexis). P. argues that the sounds produced by animals are articulate and also have meaning, and therefore express thought (see on 3.3.2). 389. It was not necessary to be a Stoic (that is, belong to the Stoic hairesis, ‘school’) to accept this general definition of expressive logos as the voicing of internal discourse: Plato said (Theaetetus 189E) that discursive thought (dianoia) is the soul talking to itself, ‘an internal dialogue of the soul with itself, without voice’ (Sophist 263E). But Stoics argued that animals cannot have expressive logos because this requires a rational impression. ‘The impression [phantasia] arises first, and then thought, which has the power of utterance, expresses in logos what it experiences by the agency of the impression’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.49, verbatim from the Survey of Diocles of Magnesia, tr. LS 39A). But ‘[the impressions] of rational animals are rational, while those of non-rational animals are non-rational. Rational impressions are thought processes [noêsis]; irrational ones are nameless’ (Diogenes Laertius 7.51, tr. LS 39A); and ‘a rational impression is one in which the content of the impression can be exhibited in language’ (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 8.70, tr. LS 33C; so, as Mates 1996: 37 points out, a phantasia alogos is not an irrational impression, but an impression which ‘lacks a content that can be expressed in speech’). If animals have only non-rational impressions, they cannot use language, and articulate sounds made by them would not be logos, because they would not convey meaning (see on 3.3.1). P. argues (3.4.2) that animal speech has meaning because it is complex and differentiated. See further on 3.5.2. 390. ‘Voiced by the tongue’: glôtta, here translated ‘tongue’, can also mean ‘language’. P. here disagrees with the Stoic claim that ‘the phônê of an animal is air struck by an impulse, but that of a human being is articulate and issues from thought’, Diogenes Laertius 7.55 tr. LS 33H. Philo, On Animals 98-9, says that birds cannot articulate, and compares their sounds with those of musical instruments (presumably wind instruments). 391. A feminine noun meaning ‘speech’ or ‘language’ or ‘utterance’ is assumed by the adjectives (Indian, Scythian, Thracian, Syrian) and pronouns in this sentence: probably phônê (so Patillon), but possibly dialektos (so Fogerolles) or phthenxis as in 3.3.5. 392. Sextus Empiricus, discussing Stoic semantics (Against the Professors 8.12, LS 33B), notes that barbarians listening to Greek hear the phônê but do not understand it. ‘for us’ translates hêmin, Nauck’s emendation for MSS eipein, ‘to speak’ (Nauck prints the MSS reading, Patillon the emendation). P. does not mean that there was no Syrian or Persian script, but that a Greek speaker who did not know Syrian or Persian would be unable to analyse or notate what he heard. 393. Sextus, Outlines 1.74, conveys this argument in one sentence; he says barbarian speech sounds monoeides, undifferentiated. 394. ‘The ancients’: see on 3.1.4. Melampous, Apollodorus 1.9.11; Apollonius, Philostratus 4.3 (where the bird is a sparrow). Tiresias’ prophetic gift, a compensation for his blindness, included understanding of animal speech. 395. This physically cleaned his ears, but religiously polluted them (compare 3.4.1). ‘Emperor’ translates basileus, ‘the king’ (the standard Greek title for the

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Notes to pages 82-83 Roman emperor) on the assumption that ‘I’ here means P. himself not the ancients he is summarising: see on 3.4.7 for the problem of the first person. 396. This is how Melampous acquired his ability, according to the scholiast on Odyssey 11.290. The Arabs who taught Apollonius to understand bird-language could all hear birds prophesying: ‘they interpret the wordless [aloga] by eating the hearts of snakes, or according to some, the liver’ (Philostratus 1.20); cf. 2 ch. 48 for diviners eating parts of bodies. Etruscans were famous for augury generally, and perhaps took a special interest in the eagle as king of the birds and messenger of Jupiter (3.5.5). 397. ‘Given their life’: Patillon prints katathemenois, ‘laid down’. Nauck has kanathemenois, which seems to be a misprint: it is not accented as a crasis (kai anathemenois), and would not make sense as such. 398. The erithakos, usually ‘robin’, is not otherwise attested as an imitator, and Thompson (1936: 100) thinks it is a mistake for psittakos, parrot. Sextus Empiricus (cited on 3.2.1) has ravens, jays and parrots, and in Outlines 1.73 ‘jays and others that utter human voices’; Plutarch (972f-73a) has starlings, ravens and parrots, which are docile and imitative to the point that ‘they teach us, in a way, that they share in expressive logos and articulate language’. But Stoics could argue that the birds merely ‘parrot’ articulate speech without understanding the relation of the sign to the thing signified (see on 3.2.1, and see further Glidden 1994). 399. The corocotta, according to Pliny (Natural History 8.107) was a hyenalioness cross. This story, repeated in various forms by Diodorus (3.35.10) and Aelian (7.22), derives from Ctesias on India (fr. 87 Muller). 400. ‘language’ translates dialektos, which P. uses for a distinct human language (Egyptian 4.10.4, Persian 4.16.1, Latin 4.16.5). He himself spoke Greek, and presumably Latin though he never acknowledges it. Phoenician had fallen out of use, and there is no evidence that he knew other languages (Millar 1997). He might, for instance, have met in Tyre people who also knew Aramaic in its Syrian and Nabatean versions, Palmyrene, or Persian. But the mention of five dialektoi suggests a comparison with Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1.142.4 (I p. 88 GCS): ‘A dialektos is a form of speech [lexis] which manifests the particular character of a place, or a form of speech which manifests a peculiar or common ethnic character. The Greeks say they have five dialektoi, Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic and the koinê, but barbarian languages [phônai] are incomprehensible, and are not to be called dialektoi but glôttai.’ For glôtta, ‘tongue’ or ‘language’, see on 3.3.1. 401. Aristotle (HA 535a26-536b23) repeatedly comments that voice requires a range of body parts. 402. Aristotle (HA 614a22-3) comments on the variety of partridge calls. Commentators have found it irresistible to suppose that ‘I myself ’ is, in this instance, P., not a transcription from his source. (See on 1.9.3, 3.3.7, 3.24.4; unfortunately, the Greek does not provide a clear verbal distinction between transcribed and personal ‘I’.) There is no other evidence that P. visited Carthage (founded by his home city Tyre, in the ninth century BCE according to tradition), but he could easily have made the short sea-crossing from Lilybaeum in Sicily, a Carthaginian foundation, where he went in 268 (Life of Plotinus 11.17). 403. Plutarch (976f) mentions Crassus (but not the children) and the eels in the spring Arethusa. 404. P.’s contrast here is between animals that have voice and voiceless animals, and his point is that the voiceless lamprey has the same impression as (for instance) Crassus’ dog who also comes when called, and barks in greeting. But this does not answer the Stoic argument (see on 3.3.2) that both lamprey and dog respond to an impression that is different from those of humans because it lacks a

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Notes to pages 83-84 propositional content (such as ‘Crassus is calling’). Cf. 3.6.1: animals may respond to a tone of voice rather than to words as signifiers. ‘Language of other animals’: here phônê is translated ‘language’ rather than ‘voice’ (see on 3.3.1). 405. ‘Way of speaking’ translates lexis (see on 3.2.1). There is probably a subtext about Atticist purism (on which see Swain 1996: 16-74), which P. would certainly have encountered when he was a student of Longinus in Athens. 406. ‘The god who is above all’ translates theos ho epi pasin: cf. 1.57.2, 2.34.2. 407. Birds do not actually live in the air, which is next to the aether where the gods live (see on 3.14.2), but they can travel in it. The krex is unidentified (possibly the corncrake): ‘pugnacious, resourceful and unlucky’ according to Aristotle HA 616b20-2. On falcons and Apollo (Helios) see 4.9.7, and see further Thompson 1936: 116-18; on ravens, ibid. 161. The stork is not otherwise associated with Hera. 408. A slightly different range of examples in Sextus, Outlines 1.75. 409. That is, animals recognise human calls because their own are similar in content. Aristotle discusses in GC 323b3-324a9 whether it is like or unlike that affects like; according to P. ‘like is known by like, because all knowledge is assimilation [homoiôsis] to the known’ (Sent. 25, p. 15 Lamberz). 410. The inverted commas represent indirect speech in the Greek: this is what the dog thinks, though P. (or his source) avoids saying that the dog thinks thus. Sextus (Outlines 1.69, LS 36E) says that ‘the dog in effect [dunamei] reasons thus ’ He ascribes the argument to Chrysippus and specifies the fifth undemonstrable (i.e. it requires no proof) syllogism with multiple disjunctions (either X or Y or Z; not X or Y, therefore Z). In Against the Professors, arguing that signs are not judgements, Sextus says that the dog who tracks by footprints is interpreting signs (see on 3.1.2) ‘but he does not for that reason derive an impression of the judgement [axiôma] “if this is a footprint, a beast is here” ’ (8.271, tr. Bury): see further Sorabji 1993: 20-8. Plutarch (Animal Cleverness 969a-c) says it is not inference but perception of the tracks which shows where the beast went (he does, however, describe a fox using a syllogism based on perception); and Philo, On Animals 84, says that the dog is following nature not logic. 411. Patillon deletes ‘not’, without explanation. P. acknowledges a counter-argument: the apparently logical dog has not been taught to reason, and therefore does not have logos but is proceeding by nature. This claim is central to Philo’s argument against animal reason in On Animals 71-97. (Compare present-day arguments that animals proceed by instinct: see further Dierauer 1997.) If ‘not’ is retained, P.’s response is that humans too have logos by nature; some words (onomata) clearly do not come by nature, because we invent them, but that is because we have a natural capacity to do so. (Stoics, following Plato in Cratylus 422E-23A, thought that the first words, onomata, were natural, in that they reflected the nature of the thing named: Tieleman 1996: 198.) If ‘not’ is deleted, P.’s response is that saying animals lack logos because they are untaught is like saying that humans have logos by nature because they have it even before they are taught, and even their capacity to invent words is natural; cf. 3.23.1, logos comes by nature, but perfected logos by education. In 3.10.1-3, P. argues (a) that to ascribe animal capacities to nature is either to say that animals are naturally rational, or to say that logos in humans is not natural; (b) one can be rational without being taught, as in the case of the gods; (c) animals can in fact be taught, by nature, and in some cases by each other and by humans. 412. What Aristotle (HA 608a17) actually says is that certain animals are receptive of some learning and instruction. The nightingale, HA 536b171-9; Aristotle comments that dialektos (articulate speech, see on 3.3.5) does not come naturally like phônê.

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Notes to pages 84-85 413. In what sense of logos? Reiske proposed adding prophorikos, ‘expressive logos’, to make the contrast with internal logos in 3.7.1. The philosophers named do not use this distinction, but it is possible that P.’s source did use it and that P. is summarising a range of citations: this may explain why (here only, but see on 4.21.6) he mentions Democritus, who called animals irrational (DK 164), but also said (DK 257) that animals who do wrong may be killed, and perhaps thereby implied moral responsibility (Sorabji 1993: 107-8). Empedocles and Pythagoras both held that a rational soul may be present in an animal body (see on 1.6.3). Neither Plato nor Aristotle said that animals are rational (see on 3.1.4), but ‘sharing in logos’ could apply to the use or understanding of language and to the ability of animals to plan and remember, use skills, follow instructions and receive teaching (see further Sorabji 1993: 65-77). 414. ‘Variation’ translates parallagê, ‘quite different’ translates exallattein: cf. 3.8.6 for this contrast. ‘More and less’: P. probably refers to HA 588a19-31, where Aristotle says that animals have ‘traces’ [ichnê] of characteristics to do with the soul, such as are more apparent in humans. ‘Tameness and wildness, gentleness and roughness, courage and cowardice, fears and boldnesses, temper and mischievousness are present in many of them together with resemblances [homoiotêtes] of intelligent understanding [tês peri tên dianoian suneseos]. Some characters differ by the more-and-less compared with man [], others differ by analogy, for corresponding to art [tekhnê], wisdom [sophia] and intelligence [sunesis] in man, certain animals possess another natural capacity of a similar sort’ (tr. Balme 1991). Aristotle makes a similar point about animal characters at 610b22, including mind [nous] and ignorance: Balme (1991: 235) says that this is the only place where he uses nous of animals, and that nous does not here have the technical sense of divine or human intellect that it has in DA. For the sharp Stoic distinction between human and non-human, see Seneca, Letters 124.13 (tr. LS 60H): ‘Of these four natures, tree, animal, man, and god, the last two, which are rational, have the same nature; they differ by the fact that one is immortal, the other mortal. The good of one of them, god’s of course, is perfect by nature, the other’s, man’s, by practice.’ 415. ‘Experience’ here translates pathos, which covers ‘experience’, ‘bad experience’ and in particular illness, and passions which affect the soul, as in 3.8.1. See on 1.30.1. 416. ‘Cast down their eyes’ translates katôpian: probably what Aristotle (HA 604b11-14) calls ‘being nymphed’, i.e. going mad. Flute-playing makes the horse go into a trance, then rush off, always looking down. (What exactly is the corresponding human ailment?) Aristotle also mentions abscesses, tetanus, and miscarriage from snuffed lights. 417. Hoarseness, branchos, is described by Aristotle, HA 602a30-b5; it may be anthrax, or foot-and-mouth. ‘Dog-choker’ translates kunankhê (cf. English ‘quinsy’), which killed Plotinus (Life of Plotinus 2.9-14). kunankhê applies to a range of illnesses, such as tonsillitis and diphtheria, in which severe swelling of the throat inhibits speech and breathing; Plotinus may have suffered from tuberculosis of the upper respiratory tract (so Grmek 1992: 337-8). The obverse of P.’s argument was used in 1997 when the British government delayed consent for xenotransplants: one reason was that pigs do not suffer from gout (because human kidneys and pig kidneys deal differently with uric acid). 418. Effects of castration: Aristotle, HA 631b19-32a14. 419. Perception is a passion (pathos) in that it affects the soul (cf. 1.30.1 and note). 420. cf. 3.7.1.

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Notes to pages 85-87 421. Iliad 16.676. Lynkeios, according to Plutarch (Moralia 1083d), could see through the proverbial ‘rock and oak’. 422. cf. Sextus, Outlines 1.70-1; Plutarch, Animal Cleverness 974b-d; and Philo, On Animals 38, for animal knowledge of medicine. 423. ‘Wiser’ translates phronimôtera. Aristotle accepts (EN 1141a25-8) that some animals [thêria] manifest phronêsis, practical wisdom, in that they seem to have a capacity for being provident in relation to their own lives. In HA 608a16 he includes phronêsis and euêtheia (foolishness) in a list of animal characteristics; but see on 3.1.4 and 3.7.1 for his caution in ascribing intellectual activity to animals. 424. For ‘variation’ and ‘quite different’, cf. 3.7.1 and note. A soul without perceptions or passions would (like the gods) have no connection with body. 425. If this is right, perhaps a rational soul could be joined with an animal body (see on 1.6.3), but P. is here interested in the question of ‘difference by more and less’, not in reincarnation. Arguments that the soul is affected together with the body (sumpaskhein) were used by the Stoics to show that the soul is also corporeal. For Plotinus on the passible element, pathêtikon, of the soul and its relationship to the body, see on 1.33.1. 426. logikê, ‘rational’, presumably implies psuchê, ‘soul’, here, cf. 3.8.2 above. 427. The Stoic Hierocles (LS 57C) used similar examples to argue for basic ‘appropriation’ (oikeiôsis, see on 1.4.2) in animals: they are aware of themselves, therefore of what is appropriate (oikeion) for their self-preservation. See further on 3.1.4 and 3.19.2; for Hierocles’ argument, see further Bastianini-Long 1992: 268-451 (text, translation and commentary), Annas 1992: 56-61, Long 1996: 250-63. 428. ‘Home’, oikêsis, was supplied by Victorius from the text of Aristotle, HA 614b31 (which refers to birds). ‘The ancients’ in this case may be Theophrastus, who (according to Diogenes Laertius 5.49) wrote an Animal Intelligence and Character, now lost; for P.’s use of ‘ancient’ see on 3.1.5. 429. i.e. it is not natural for humans to be perfected in reason (cf. 3.23.1: logos comes by nature, but perfected logos comes from effort and education). For P.’s argument here, cf. 3.6.4 and note. 430. ‘As we have said’: 3.6.5. For memory as a proof of rationality, see on 3.1.4. 431. Nauck prints kakiai aphthonoi, ‘abundant [lit. ungrudging] vices’, for MSS hai kakiai kai hoi phthonoi, ‘vices and grudges’. P. does not discuss grudges here, but Theophrastus wrote on grudging behaviour in animals (see on 3.23.5). Vice indicates rationality because it is disobedience to reason (see on 3.2.2, and cf. 1.12.6 and note on whether animal behaviour can be reformed). But Stoics would argue that animals cannot be virtuous or vicious, because they cannot choose to live in accordance with reason (see on 3.22.6): thus Philo, On Animals 66-71, argues for animal vices as evidence of rationality, but in his refutation (97) denies that animals can make choices. Stoics could also argue that animals do not have passions so cannot make choices about them. According to Galen, reporting Poseidonius, ‘Chrysippus [] does not believe that the soul’s passionate [pathêtikon] part is different from the rational; and he takes passions away from the non-rational animals, although they are plainly governed by appetite and competition, as Poseidonius also explains in a fuller treatment of them’ (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 5.6.37, tr. LS 65I). Galen may have exaggerated the difference between Chrysippus and Poseidonius on pathê: see further Gill in Braund and Gill 1997: 225, and ibid. 5-15 for a useful survey of philosophical debate on passions. 432. Plutarch, Gryllos 990d, and Philo, On Animals 48, also make this point. 433. Male pigeons: Aristotle, HA 612b35.

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Notes to pages 87-88 434. For ant stories, see Plutarch, Animal Cleverness 967e: even the Stoic Cleanthes, who said that animals lack logos, saw one group of ants ransoming a corpse from another group. But Philo, On Animals 77-8, argues that apparently social behaviour in animals is activated by nature, not by reason. Aristotle (PA 650b19-27) says that ants and bees have exceptional perception and phronêsis because they have a pure thin fluid instead of blood. 435. ‘Marital chastity’ translates sôphrosunê  pros tous sunoikous. In other versions of the ring-dove story (see Thompson 1936 s.v. phatta) the adulterous couple are attacked by other ring-doves. Storks were believed to feed the parents who had fed them. 436. Nauck prints the emendation of Valentinus, ‘the acts of God’ (tou theou) for ‘the acts of the sun’ (tou hêliou). But the sun is important to P.’s argument. It is a visible god created by the god above all (2.36.3, 2.37.3), and its orderly movement within the universe, and constant provision of light without being diminished, are both evidence for the workings of God’s intellect. To say that an animal’s consistent fidelity is not evidence for reason and virtue, but that the animal is acting by nature, is like saying that the sun’s consistent shining is not evidence for the reason and goodness of God. 437. ‘Created’ translates dêmiourgêsasa; dêmiourgos, ‘craftsman’, is Plato’s name for the creator-god in the Timaeus, and is used of the Stoic creator in 3.20.4. 438. ‘Territory’ here translates topos, ‘place’. Aristotle (HA 608b19-21) said that there is war among animals that live in the same places and from the same things; but, ibid. 30-5, probably all animals would be tame if they had plenty of food, as in Egypt (was he thinking of sacred crocodiles?). ‘Necessary and simple’ is probably P.’s comment, cf. 1.49.4. 439. War, famine and cannibalism: cf. 2.7.2, 2.27.1, 2.57.1. 440. ‘Connection’ translates skhesis. P. refers to the Epicurean argument (1.12.5-6) that it is not possible to make a social contract with animals, and they live with us because they are useful to us. People who do not make social contracts fail to use reasoning (1.8.3-4), but are not non-rational: they can be constrained by the threat of punishment. Patillon thinks the text of 3.13.1 is defective, and reads epei ta ek tês khreias ên anaptontôn tên pros auta koinônian, ‘because they were of those who make our society with animals depend on need not on reason’. But Nauck prints epeita ek tês khreias (‘then from need’), which is translated here. 441. The ‘someone’ has not been identified. Slaves could not make contracts because they were not autonomous; but a reliable slave was an asset that a sensible owner would protect. Moreover (3.13.3) animals, unlike humans, do not show ingratitude to their benefactors. 442. Vice is disobedience to reason and therefore evidence for rationality; but see on 3.10.4 for counter-arguments. Aristotle, HA 613b24-31 provides instances of sexual rivalry in birds. 443. Stoics would argue that ‘uncontrolled appetite’, akrasia, in animals cannot be a case of appetite overcoming principle, or its absence a case of reason controlling appetite, because they did not accept that animals can assess their impressions: see further on 3.1.4. P. interprets urination as a sign of contempt, which would imply awareness that e.g. ‘someone tried to trap me’. 444. Odysseus’ crew were driven by hunger to eat the cattle of the Sun, even though he had warned them not to: Odyssey 12.320-419. 445. Aether was thought to be fiery, and fire to be most like the gods and least like bodies (cf. 2.5.2 and note, 4.18.3); air, especially damp air, could be associated with bodies (cf. 2.38.2 and note on the bodies of daimones); water and earth were

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Notes to pages 88-89 appropriate for cold, heavy bodies (cf. 1.28.2 and note), but water could at least be pure (4.20.5). 446. Philo, On Animals 23-8, gives a much fuller account of circus skills. 447. ‘Awareness’ translates epaisthêsis (see on 1.57.2). Stoics did not accept that animals understand signs, including language (see on 3.2.1, 3.3.2), but P.’s point is that these trained animals can discriminate among commands. 448. P.’s opponents argue that animals have none of the basic institutions of a Greek city: council (boulê), assembly and lawcourts. In reply, he moves from the institution to the individual, asking how it could be proved that animals do not deliberate (bouleuesthai) before they act. Aristotle said they did not (HA 488b24), but offered no evidence. See further on 3.1.4, and, for a (possible) example of an animal deliberating what to do, see 3.14.1. 449. Apis the Argive hero, not Apis the Egyptian bull; but according to the Roman scholar Varro (first century BCE; reported in Augustine City of God 18.5) there was a connection. Varro, whose historical introduction to The Roman Race began with the ancient kingdom of Sicyon in Argos, said that Apis sailed to Egypt. When he died there he became the Egyptian god Sarapis, a name composed of Apis + soros, ‘coffin’; the Apis bull worshipped in his honour was not in a coffin (compare 4.9.5 and note for the origin of Sarapis). Cf. Smelik and Hemelrijk 1984: 1904-5 for other Greek and Roman attempts to appropriate Egyptian religion. 450. The story of Aristodikos (‘best and just’) is told by Herodotus 1.157-9. The Persians demanded the return of suppliants, and the oracle of Apollo authorised this. Aristodikos began to drive out the sparrows which nested in the eaves of Apollo’s temple, prompting the god to say that the sparrows were his suppliants (and the first oracle was intended to ensure fitting punishment for those who hand over suppliants). The famously just Rhadamanthos was, according to Plato (Apology 41A), a judge of the dead: in his commentary on an oracle about the death of Plotinus (Life 23.31-3) P. calls Minos, Rhadamanthos and Aiakos ‘judges of souls and children of God’. Commentators on Plato assimilated the oath of Rhadamanthos to the oaths of Socrates. The scholiast on Apology 22A (p. 5 Greene) comments: ‘By dog: this is the oath of Rhadamanthos by the goose or the dog or the plane-tree or the ram or such. “Their greatest oath on anything ‘by dog’, ‘by goose’ – the gods they never mentioned,” Kratinos Cheirones [fr. 231K]. Socrates’ oaths were also like this.’ Socrates swore ‘by dog’, nê ton kuna, or ‘by goose’, nê ton khêna, for nê ton Zêna, ‘by Zeus’. (Aristophanes, Birds 521, says Lampon did this when committing perjury.) Olympiodorus (Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias 461a, p. 64.1-2 Westerink), says that the dog symbolises the rational soul which discriminates good from evil, just as in Republic 375E the dog is said to have a touch of philosophy because it can tell friends from enemies: cf. 3.16.6. 451. Ram’s horns were specifically for Zeus Ammon; Dionysus was widely associated with bulls. 452. This sentence = Pindar fr. 102 Turyn; there is no context, but see Smelik and Hemelrijk 1984: 1904-5 for this and other Greek attempts to explain zoomorphic gods. 453. ‘They say’, phasi, is Bergk’s emendation (printed by Patillon but not by Nauck) for MSS Pasiphaês: the bull loved by Pasiphae was not (for once) Zeus in disguise. Zeus became a bull to carry off Europa, an eagle to carry off Ganymede, a swan to seduce Leda; he was nursed by the goat Amaltheia. 454. P. makes Rhadamanthos the son of Zeus and Dikê (personified Justice) rather than Europa (the more usual version); see on 3.16.2 for his oath. Socrates compared himself to swans who know when they are about to die, and sing their best for joy that they are going to God whom they serve. ‘I am the fellow-slave of

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Notes to pages 89-90 the swans and priest of the same god, and I have from the master no worse a prophetic gift than they have’ (Plato, Phaedo 85B). 455. Plato, Timaeus 91D-92E, says that animals originated from humans who had made bad use of their human lives, and whose souls were therefore joined with more appropriate bodies; P. links this with myths of metamorphosed humans such as Philomela (the nightingale) and Procne (the swallow). The halcyon, ‘wisest and dearest to the gods’, is a devoted spouse and parent who builds a watertight nest (Plutarch 982f-983d); dolphins, dear especially to Apollo, are the only creatures who love humans for themselves (984a-985b). 456. A she-wolf fed Romulus and Remus, a deer fed Telephos son of Herakles, a goat fed Zeus, bees fed Plato; Diodorus Siculus (2.4.3-4) reports the Semiramis story from Ctesias; Pompeius Trogus (1.4) says that Cyrus was fed by a bitch. The Thracian hero was called Kyknos, ‘swan’ (Athenaeus 9.393d). 457. P. gives the Greek titles: he evidently derives Dionysos Eiraphiotes from eriphos, ‘kid’, Apollo Lykeios from lukos, ‘wolf ’ (see on 1.22.1) and Delphinios from delphis, ‘dolphin’; and, more securely, Poseidon Hippios and Athena Hippia from hippos, ‘horse’. The strongest association of Hekate is with dogs, but she is represented as triform and in company with several other animals. P. may allude to invocations in the Chaldaean Oracles (cf. 4.16.5) where Hekate is a mediating principle: see further Johnston 1990, and cf. the citation from P. Philosophy from Oracles in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 4.23.7, an oracle of Hekate which describes her as three-headed and ‘bull-faced’. 458. Herodotus 4.26 says that the Scythian Issedones eat the flesh of their dead fathers cooked with that of animals; the son gilds the skull and makes yearly offerings to it, ‘as Greeks do for birthdays’. It was a commonplace that old people become less rational, like children. 459. P. signals that he is summarising before changing source. ‘The ancients’ remain unidentified (see on 3.1.5), but at 3.18.3 he moves to Plutarch. Chs 3-17 may also derive from Plutarch’s lost works on animals. The catalogue of Lamprias lists, besides Animal Cleverness (no. 147, used by P. from 3.20.6), A Fictional Work on Irrational Animals (no. 127) and Are Animals Rational? (no. 135): one of these is probably Gryllos, or Animals are Rational (Moralia 985d-92e). Flesh-Eating, also used by P., survives incomplete and with gaps (993a-99b). 460. Plants lack logos (see on 3.19.2), so justice is not appropriate, but even so humans do not kill them but make use of fruit they have let fall or of grain that has died naturally (cf. 1.6.3, 2.13.1; P. does not discuss vegetables). Animals do have logos, but humans insist on killing the animals they eat and reject those that have died naturally (thnêseida); presumably this is both because the animals have not been sacrificed and because old or terminally ill animals are not good to eat. Fish, unlike sacrificed animals, usually die without being stunned and stabbed by humans, but we still cause their deaths by forcing them out of water. Most fish could not be used for blood sacrifice, and this is one reason why fish were associated with luxury: they were killed specifically for food. (The emperor Julian argued for abstinence from fish because humans do not farm them or use them in sacrifice, and also because they belong in the depths: Or. 5.176b-77a.) 461. Sandbach 1969 fr.193, extending to 3.20.6 where P. switches to Animal Cleverness. 462. P. raised the question of human harmlessness at the outset (3.1.3), and returns to it in his conclusion (3 chs 26-7). In 3.26.9-13 he reaffirms that God has not made it impossible for us to survive without injustice (compare the Stoic argument advanced in 1.4.4): unlike God, we have needs, but we can, by justice, emulate the harmlessness of God, for we do not harm plants by harvesting or sheep

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Notes to pages 90-91 by shearing and milking. 3.27.2 seems less confident that we can avoid harming plants. 463. cf. Plutarch, Seven Sages 159c: ‘where God has made a creature’s survival impossible without harm to another, he has assigned to that creature a nature which is the origin of injustice.’ 4 chs 6-9 provides the example of Egyptian priests who purify themselves by fasting; perhaps Pygmalion of Cyprus (4 ch. 15) counts as a barbarian king. 464. Such arguments are reported in 1.4.4 (Stoics and Peripatetics, transcribed from Plutarch, Animal Cleverness 964a), 1.12.5-6 (Epicureans), 1.14.1-2 (‘plain man’ arguments). 465. cf. 1.21.1 for (anti-vegetarian) arguments that if it is unjust to kill animals, it is also unjust to take wool or milk. ‘Butcher’ translates mageireuein: the mageiros was a specialist in the ritually correct slaughter, butchery and cooking of meat (see on 1.46.2). 466. fr. 194 Nauck, from Prometheus Unbound (the ‘mating of horses and donkeys’ produces mules). Plutarch cites the lines in Animal Cleverness (964f), but in a different context: it is just to kill dangerous animals and tame those which can help us. 467. ‘Relish’ is the conventional (and unsatisfactory) translation for opson. The basic word for ‘food’ is sitos, which implies grain made into bread or porridge. Anything eaten with sitos, ranging from herbs and olives to elaborate meat dishes, is opson; meat dishes, however big, are always opson. Cf. 2.29.1-2 for horror at killing a plough-ox, and 1.22.2 for Herakles eating one. 468. ‘to be injured’ translates adikeisthai, the verb related to adikia, ‘wrongdoing’ or ‘injustice’. P. briefly states the principle that a creature which has sensation can experience suffering and should not be made to suffer. (This does not include plants, because plant sensation is different: see next note. In Sent. 12 P. distinguishes the life of a plant from the life of an ensouled creature.) Stoics would not accept that animals experience pain or fear or harm as a rational being does, on the grounds that animal sensations do not have a propositional content (e.g. ‘this is intolerable’) that the animal can accept or reject. See further on 3.1.4. 469. Plato (Timaeus 77BC) said that plants are living creatures (zôia, the word also used for ‘animals’) and have perception (aisthêsis) of pleasure and pain and related appetites, but have neither belief (doxa) nor reasoning (logismos); they grow but are not self-moved, and receive perception but do not observe and reflect on their own nature. (P. discusses Plato’s use of ‘perception’ here in To Gauros, on how embryos are ensouled ch. 4, p. 37.27-41.4 Kalbfleisch. He concludes that Plato meant only reaction to sensation.) Aristotle (DA 413a26-b1) said that all living things are ensouled, but the only potentialities of soul available to plants are growth (and decay) and nutrition. For the Stoics, plants have phusis (nature or growth-principle), but not soul, because they have neither impressions (phantasia) nor impulse (hormê). It follows that they cannot recognise or pursue what is appropriate (oikeios) to them (Diogenes Laertius 7.85 = LS 57A). 470. ‘Appropriation’, as usual, translates oikeiôsis (see on 1.4.2), i.e. acknowledgement of that which is appropriate (oikeios) to us. ‘Perception is the beginning of appropriation’: cf. Plutarch, Mor. 1038b (LS 57E2, Greek text only): ‘oikeiôsis seems to be a perception and apprehension [antilêpsis] of what is oikeios’ (see further on 3.9.2 and 3.1.4). Appropriation is the beginning of justice because we progress from concern for our own preservation to recognition of other beings as appropriate (oikeios) to us, not in the basic sense that we recognise them as important to our interests, but in the extended sense that we recognise them as

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Notes to pages 91-93 having interests for which we should be concerned (see on 3.22.7, and see further Schofield 1995). 471. ‘justice’ (dikaion) is not in the text, but must obviously be supplied. 472. Sandbach 1969: 357 suggests that 3.19.2-3 is P.’s work, perhaps with elements of Plutarch’s. 473. Chrysippus the Stoic, c. 280-207 BCE, the ‘second founder’ of the school, which might not have survived without him (Diogenes Laertius 7.183). There is a catalogue of his many writings in Diogenes Laertius 7.189-202; because he wrote so much and was an authority on doctrine, he is a favourite target for Plutarch (and for Galen). Abst. 3.20.1 and 3 = LS 54P; cf. 54H, from Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.37-9. 474. Stoics argued that God is the ‘designing fire’ which both creates the world and is itself a constituent of the world (see further LS section 46). 475. Carneades (214-129 BCE), founder of the New Academy, argued that we can never know for certain whether an impression (phantasia) is veridical, so we must follow probability. He challenged dogmatic philosophers (especially the Stoics) by showing the inconsistencies in their systems. 476. ‘Good is benefit [ôpheleia] or not other than benefit, meaning by “benefit” virtue and virtuous action’ (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 11.22, tr. LS 60G1). euchrêstia, ‘utility’, could apply to ‘goods according to nature’, e.g. health or strength, which are valuable but not essential and not invariably good. 477. Odyssey 11.97. 478. From 3.20.7 to 3.24.5 P. is either transcribing or closely paraphrasing Plutarch, Animal Cleverness (Moralia 959e-963f). He makes very little alteration, except for adapting from the dialogue form. In this sentence, Plutarch has akampes, ‘unbending’, where the MSS of P. have apathes, ‘unaffected’. 479. This sentence is added by P. 480. ‘making  familiar’ translates enoikeioumenois: that is, by making passions oikeion, ‘our own’ (see on 1.4.2 for the problem of translating oikeios and related words). 481. This abrupt transition results from P.’s omitting a section of Plutarch’s text (960ab) which links the argument to the previous day’s discussion and the argument to come. The Stoic objection introduced by ‘yes, they say’ is, for Plutarch, an argument that was not properly considered the day before. 482. ‘as if  in beings’ adapts the beginning of a response by another speaker in Plutarch’s dialogue. 483. ‘should have a rational and an irrational aspect, another will think that animate nature’ is missing in the MSS, but is supplied from Plutarch, Animal Cleverness 960c. 484. ‘But this is absurd’ is P.’s addition. 485. The changes in English reflect changes in the Greek. In 3.21.3 ‘concerned with impression’ translates phantastikon, in 3.21.4 ‘that forms impressions’ translates phantasioumenon. Similarly, in 3.21.3 ‘sentient’ translates aisthêtikon, and in 3.21.4 ‘sensing’ translates aisthanomenon. 486. Stoics accepted that animals have perception and impulse, and P. will go on to argue that this implies belief and reasoning, but the Stoics also claimed that animal perceptions and impulses differ from those of humans (see further on 3.1.4 and 3.3.3). 487. Usually nous and related words are translated ‘intellect’, but in this passage ‘mind’ for nous, ‘thinking’ or ‘thought’ for noein, are more natural English (and the kind of thinking described is discursive thought, dianoia, rather than intellection). Strato of Lampsacus, a pupil of Theophrastus and contemporary of

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Notes to pages 93-94 Epicurus, was head of the Peripatetic school from 288 – c. 269 BCE. A fragment probably from Plutarch (Sandbach 1969: 43-7) sets out his argument that all perception is felt in the soul, not in the bodily part which is affected (see further Annas 1992: 28-30). Plotinus disagreed (Ennead 4.7.7). 488. Plutarch (Moralia 336b) attributes this saying to Epicharmus, a writer of comedies (fifth century BCE) whom he believed to be a Pythagorean (Numa 8). It is cited also in Abst. 1.41.1. 489. Plutarch cites this also in his Life of Cleomenes, 810e. 490. The writings of Chrysippus (listed by Diogenes Laertius 7.189-202) include several Introductions and Definitions, and Stoics held that correct definition is essential to properly articulated thought. ‘project  preceding action’ cites such definitions (cf. SVF 3.173, from Stobaeus). Project, plan and preparation are all examples of ‘practical impulse’, i.e. impulse to practical action. Stoics argued (see on 3.3.3) that though all soul has perception and impulse, human impulse (like human perception) is distinctively rational and involves assent to a proposition, and practical action is also rational; animals are not rational, so they are activated, but do not act. See further Sorabji 1993: 52-4, 113-14. 491. ‘Thoughts’ translates noêseis, ‘concepts’ ennoiai, ‘movements of thought’ dianoêseis. 492. This sounds like another Stoic definition, but P. also exploits the Epicurean keywords ‘distress’, ‘pain’, ‘pleasure’. Cf. 1.12.6 note for Epicurus’ acknowledgement that some animals respond to correction. 493. More Stoic definitions of enchantment and spellbinding (SVF 3.400-3). The fish, thrissa, is difficult to identify: it has many small bones. Plutarch (961e) has clapping as well as singing, and adds another example: the horned owl can be caught while moving his shoulders in time to dancing. But how does a response to rhythm or melody demonstrate reason? 494. ‘quasi’ translates hôsanei, which the Stoics used when a term applied not strictly but analogously. Tieleman 1996: 175 suggests that animal behaviour was being described not as non-rational but as sub-rational. 495. The sequence of argument in this paragraph seems odd because P. has incorporated a counter-argument and response from Plutarch’s dialogue. 3.22.6-7 corresponds to Animal Cleverness 961f-962b, in which Soklaros says that he is convinced (like the sensible person of 3.22.5) by the arguments about animal emotions and plans, but he still thinks that animals do not aim at or progress in virtue, which is the purpose of logos, and he does not see why nature would have given them the beginnings of logos when they cannot achieve its purpose. Autoboulos responds that the Stoics apparently find this a reasonable position, for they accept that animals love their offspring and thus have the beginnings of justice (see next note) but still say that animals cannot achieve justice. 496. Chrysippus On Justice (as reported by Plutarch, Mor. 1938b, LS 57E2) conceded that ‘even beasts’ recognise their own offspring as oikeios, their own, so far as they need to (fish do not). This (see on 3.19.2) is the beginning of oikeiôsis, i.e. recognition of other creatures as appropriate (oikeios) objects of concern, which is the origin of justice. But Chrysippus also said there is no relationship of justice between humans and animals (see on 3.1.4), so human oikeiôsis extends only to other rational beings; and animal oikeiôsis goes so far and no further, like the mules which can copulate but cannot conceive. 497. Because of the Stoic claim (see on 3.2.3) that all wrongdoing is equally a failure to do right. Stoics did not assume that slaves as such are vicious: they held that virtue or vice depends on character not on social or legal status. P. (or Plutarch) is thinking of a slave who has never been given the moral education that

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Notes to pages 94-97 provides ‘authentic, complete logos’ (3.23.1). P. has, apparently, added Zeno to Plutarch’s standard examples of Socrates and Plato. 498. cf. 3.10.4 and note, 3.13.2. 499. See on 3.10.1. 500. ‘However many there are’ is not in Plutarch: it is probably P.’s reinforcement of ‘not one human is wise’ (cf. 3.22.8). 501. The MSS of P. have ‘comparing land horses with river [horses]’, i.e. with hippopotami. Nauck prints this, but Patillon follows his advice to restore Plutarch’s storks (962e), cf. 3.11.1. The section which P. excerpts from Plutarch’s dialogue is an introduction to its main topic, ‘whether land or sea animals are cleverer’. 502. Partridges: Aristotle, HA 613b26-8. Pigeons, ibid. 612b33-a3. 503. Probably the Stoic Antipater of Tarsus: this passage (in Plutarch 962f) = SVF III.3 fr. 47. Lynx [urine], lyngourion, is supplied from Plutarch 962f; it was believed to be valuable as medicine, and to crystallise into a precious stone, perhaps a kind of amber (French 1994: 190, 195). Theophrastus, F362A FHSG, used the lynx hiding its urine (obviously no use to itself) as an example of grudging animals. Swallows: Aristotle, HA 612b30-2. 504. On ‘more and less’ see 3.7.1 and note. 505. ‘Think’ translates phronein, ‘reflection’ translates dianoeisthai. 506. 3.24.1 drastically abridges Plutarch 963bc, which refers to future speakers in the dialogue and to the examples of animal ability supplied by Roman spectacle (these are also exploited in Philo On Animals). The first sentence of 3.24.2 is more clearly expressed by Plutarch. 507. Plutarch, writing dialogue, has ‘you’. 508. The Plutarch quotation ends here; P. used the next section (963f-964c) in 1 chs 4-6. The ‘several books’ are only two, so far as is known: the fragment cited 3.18.3-20.6, and Animal Cleverness cited 3.20.7-24.5; but P. may have used books by Plutarch now lost (see on 3.18.1). 509. 3.25.1-4 = Theophrastus F531 FHSG. Discussion in Fortenbaugh 1984: 274-85 covers the extent of this fragment (see on 3.25.3, 3.26.2) and the question whether it comes from On Piety (see on 2.5.1), or from (e.g.) the lost Animal Intelligence and Character (Diogenes Laertius 5.49; see on 3.25.4). 510. In this section oikeios, usually translated as ‘our own’ or ‘appropriate’ (see on 1.4.2), is translated as ‘related’, because this citation from Theophrastus centres on oikeiotês, ‘relatedness’. This is a biological fact, from which moral consequences should follow, whereas Stoic oikeiôsis is a process of recognising and identifying with what is ours: see further Brink 1955 on the different approach of Theophrastus and the Stoics. 511. Aristotle (PA 646a12-24) distinguishes elements (stoicheia) such as earth, air, water and fire from homoiomerê (‘having parts which are like each other’) such as bone and flesh. (One bit of bone is like another bit of bone, whereas one part of a hand is not like another part of the hand.) He also gives examples of fluid homoiomerê such as blood, serum and marrow (647b10). 512. Aristotle conceded practical wisdom [phronêsis] and providence [pronoia] to animals, but would probably not have accepted logismos, reasoning: see on 3.1.4. 513. Fortenbaugh 1984 ends the citation (his L92) here, taking 3.25.4 as the beginning of P.’s summing-up. FHSG include 3.25.4 in F531. 514. ‘have intelligence’ translates phronousi. For ‘mixtures’ (kraseis) see on 4.20.1. 515. P. perhaps misremembered Euripides, Suppliants 690: haimatos te phoiniou rhoas, ‘flows of red blood’. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, cites this

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Notes to pages 97-99 paragraph as Euripides fr. 1004, reporting Valkenaer’s suggestion that the fragment is phoinious ekhei rhoas / ta zôia panta, ‘all animals have blood-red flows’. 516. ‘Relatives’ translates oikeioi (see on 3.25.1). For Pythagoras, cf. Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 108: ‘[Pythagoras] told the legislators among the “civics” [i.e. the Pythagoreans who continued to have civic concerns] to abstain from animate beings, for, wanting to act with complete justice, they surely must not injure kindred animals. How could they convince others to act justly if they themselves were caught being greedy? Animals are partners in kinship: they are linked to us as if in brotherhood, because they have in common with us life, the same elements, and the mixture [sunkrasis] formed from these.’ Pythagoras meant ‘the same soul’ in the strictest sense: not just a soul with emotions, reasoning and perception like human souls (as in 3.25.3), but a soul that may at some time inhabit a human body (see on 1.6.3). 517. cf. 2.22.2, from Theophrastus; but 3 ch. 26 is not citation, but P.’s restatement of arguments from Theophrastus and others (see further Brink 1955). 518. This looks like one of P.’s signals that he has changed source, or is adding his own comments. 519. cf. Plutarch, Mor. 1070d, citing Chrysippus On Justice: ‘if pleasure is the goal, justice cannot be preserved, but if pleasure is not the goal but simply a good, it can’. See 1 ch. 4 (Plutarch 964b is cited 1.4.4) for the argument that justice is destroyed if it is extended to animals. 520. Contrast the Epicurean argument, 1 chs 10-12, that human advantage is best served by human social contract and licence to kill animals. 521. ‘appropriation’ again translates oikeiôsis (see on 1.4.2): someone who achieves it recognises that animals are appropriate (oikeion) to him, i.e. that they are proper objects of his concern (see on 3.19.2). Nauck prints his own emendation hetoimos estai, ‘will be ready’, for MSS hetoimos esti, ‘is ready’. 522. ‘Hunger is the best relish’: Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.3.5. ‘Relish’ translates opson (see on 3.19.1): meat was always an opson. 523. cf. Plutarch, Mor. 159c, and 3.18.3-4. 524. The Stoics argued that the origin of justice is ‘appropriation’ (oikeiôsis), i.e. recognition of other beings as appropriate objects of our concern; but they restricted this concern to ‘beings like us’, i.e. rational beings, and excluded animals. See further on 3.1.4 and 3.19.2. 525. Plato, Republic 441E. P. moves (without making it explicit) to the Platonic account of justice: each part of the soul does its own job and does not encroach on another’s. 526. ‘assimilation’ translates homoiôsis, ‘becoming like’ (see on 1.54.6). 527. cf. 2.13.1 (from Theophrastus). 528. Tutelage (paidagôgia): cf. 1.44.2, 1.45.1 and 4. 529. The primary goods in accordance with nature (prôta kata phusin) are ‘health, strength, well functioning sense organs, and the like’ (LS 58C2). For the Stoics, they are strictly speaking indifferent (neither good nor bad in themselves), because virtue (the only true good) does not depend on them; but they are appropriate to the nature of the creature, which therefore pursues them and avoids their opposites. 530. ‘free from distress’ and ‘not lacking’ are Epicurean catchwords: cf. 1.49.3. 531. ‘Image’ translates eikôn. The image of God in humans is the intellect, which needs nothing material and can achieve assimilation to God. (P. need not intend an allusion to Genesis 1.26 ‘let us make man in our image and likeness’, kat’ eikona kai homoiôsin in the Septuagint translation: Plato’s use of eikôn and of homoiôsis (cf. 3.26.13) was often used to expound Genesis.) In Republic, Plato used

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Notes to pages 99-100 eikôn for image as opposed to reality (e.g. 510e), but later Platonists were more influenced by the end of the Timaeus, in which ‘the visible world is a perceptible god, an image of the intelligible’ (92C). (Cf. Corpus Hermeticum 11.15, tr. Copenhaver 1992: 40: ‘eternity, therefore, is an image of god; the cosmos is an image of eternity; and the sun is an image of the cosmos. The human is an image of the sun.’) In Life of Plotinus 1.4-9 P. uses eikôn for a portrait of Plotinus, and cites him as using eidôlon (‘image’ in the sense ‘copy’) for the body that would be represented in the portrait: see further Pépin 1992: 301-34. 532. Empedocles fr. 118 Inwood (DK 124). 533. ‘Generation’, coming to be (see on 1.41.4), implies decay: material bodies are always losing something which needs to be replaced, so we need to eat (cf. 2.39.1, 4.20.15). Poverty is privation, and cannot exist unless there is something of which it is deprived; so the more you need (because you have failed to see where true riches are), the closer you are to poverty. Poverty and Resource evoke Plato, Symposium 203b, where they are the parents of Love. Plutarch (Isis and Osiris 374cd) interpreted Resource (son of Wisdom) as intelligible reality, Poverty as matter, their offspring as the universe (kosmos). Plotinus (Ennead 3.5.5) rejected the identification of Eros with the universe; he said that Eros is born of Resource and Poverty ‘in that the lack and the aspiration and the memory of the rational principles coming together in the soul produced the activity directed towards the good, and this is Love. But his mother is Poverty, because aspiration belongs to that which is in need. And Poverty is matter, because matter, too, is in every way in need’ (Ennead 3.5.9.46-9, tr. Armstrong). P. (Sent. 37) suggested that Poverty is an allegory of the soul emptied of its own power and of resources by its inclination towards matter, and Resource an allegory of the soul raised towards intellect and discovering its full powers. The material world is the ‘outside’, i.e. the external world, of 3.27.4 (cf. 3.27.11, food from outside). For ‘riveted’, another Platonic metaphor, see on 1.38.3. 534. The soul fell away from the good (i.e. the intelligible world) because of its attraction to the inferior and material body. Anyone who acts unjustly prefers something inferior and material (e.g. possessions) to goodness: that is, he prefers deprivation. For evil as privation of good, see further on 1.30.7. 535. The true self is the intellect, which is capable of assimilation to God. See futher on 3.27.11. 536. There is a seeming contradiction with P.’s argument (1 chs 30-41) that the true philosopher should not experience any way of life other than the contemplative; but P. argued there that a committed philosopher cannot also engage in politics or social life, whereas here his point is that the philosopher cannot have avoided experiencing unreason, but has risen above it and can therefore make an informed choice between unreason and intellect. For ‘proper conduct’ (kathêkonta) see on 1.27.1. 537. See on 3.27.10. 538. This paragraph is close paraphrase of Plutarch, Mor. 160bc. The Danaids (daughters of Danaus) killed their bridegrooms, and were punished after death by having to fill a leaky water-jar with a sieve: the philosophical use of the myth derives from Plato, Gorgias 493B. 539. Hesiod, Works and Days 117-8 (also quoted in 4.2.2); ibid. 192, Aidôs (respect for others) and Dikê (justice) will leave earth for heaven as human behaviour worsens in the present age; or, ibid. 200, Aidôs and Nemesis (retribution) will leave; ibid. 256-61 Dikê (justice) denounces injustices to Zeus. In Plato, Protagoras 322C, human society cannot work until Zeus sends aidôs and dikê. 540. ‘Recovering your own’ translates apolambanôn: cf. P. Sent. 40 (p. 50.16-21

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Notes to pages 100-101 Lamberz), ‘for those who can go intellectually towards their own being [ousia] and know their own being and in that knowing [gnôsis] and the knowledge of that knowing recover [apolambanein] themselves in the unity of knower and known: for them, present to themselves, Being [to on] too is present.’ 541. cf. 3.18.4. 542. P. returns to the arguments of book 1. ‘Advantage’ and ‘pleasure’ are key concepts for Epicureans (1 chs 7-12, 49-55), and are also central to the ‘plain man’ arguments of 1 chs 13-26. P. describes the peaceful and healthy Golden Age which preceded meat-eating and the war and competition which followed it; the generally admirable society of Sparta, achieved by Lycurgus even though people were now eating meat; and the spiritual elite of four non-Greek cultures, with an addendum (4 ch. 19) on Crete. These examples allow him to counter a range of earlier arguments. Human interest is not best served by killing animals (1.10.1): instead, abstinence must benefit the community as a whole, because Spartan society is admirable (4.5.2-6) and because abstinence is universally practised by those, i.e. priests, who approach the gods on behalf of the state (cf. 4.17.10, the king asks for the advice and prayers of the Brahmans). It is not true that everybody everywhere has eaten meat since the use of fire was discovered (1.13.4-5). Eating meat is not essential for health (1.15.2, 1.17.1-3): primitive Greece (4.2.4), Lycurgan Sparta (4.3.2: he does not make the point that these are soldiers) and Egyptian priests (4.8.1) are counter-examples. It is not true that animals will consume all resources (1.11.3-4, 1.16.1-2, 1 ch. 24) if humans do not keep their numbers in check: those we do not eat still do not multiply uncontrollably (4.14.3). The question ‘but suppose everyone led the life of abstinence?’ (1.16.1, 1.26.1) is answered at 4.18.49. P. then recapitulates his arguments (4 ch. 20) to show the underlying principles of purity by which the true philosopher lives. He deals with another argument from culture: those who eat only meat (1.5.1) do so from necessity and are not to be imitated (4.21.1). The missing final sections (see on 4.22.7) must have dealt with the argument (1.15.3) that no other wise man has followed Pythagoras, and P.’s peroration may have opposed seeming advantage and the snare of pleasure to the blessedness of the true philosopher. 543. 4.2.1-8 = Dicaearchus fr. 49 Wehrli; this is the longest extant fragment, but P. has summarised and adapted it to his own purposes (see the following notes and Segonds 1995, xiv-xv). Dicaearchus, like Theophrastus, was a pupil of Aristotle, active in the late fourth century to early third century BCE. For his Life of Greece (Bios Hellados) see Saunders forthcoming, Schütrumpf forthcoming. 544. cf. Plato, Philebus 16C: ‘the ancients, being better than us and living closer to the gods ’ This belief was widespread (see Tieleman 1996: 226 for Stoic philosophers). The conclusion ‘killed no animate being’ is almost certainly P.’s emphasis. It could also be his deduction from Hesiod (see next note) or from the rationalised version of Hesiod given by Dicaearchus. But (Schütrumpf forthcoming) Dicaearchus too may have presented a vegetarian Golden Age, following Plato: in Republic (372B) the people of the primitive state eat simple plant foods, live peaceful and healthy lives and die old; and in the Statesman (271E-2A), the Age of Kronos is a time of direct rule by God, who ‘herds’ humans and assigns guardian spirits to other species. There is no predation and no fighting, crops grow uncultivated, and people can talk to animals (272BC). 545. Hesiod, Works and Days 116-19. 546. In 4.6.6 a phusikos logos is a natural principle allegorically expressed in myth and ritual. Here the contrast is between the natural principle, logos, and muthos, myth: Hesiod’s Golden Age is demythologised to provide a rational and

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Notes to pages 101-102 natural account of primitive life. eikos and eikotôs, ‘as you would expect’ or ‘reasonably’, recur throughout Dicaearchus’ reconstruction. 547. Hesiod says ‘without effort and grief ’ (Works and Days 113). Contrast Theophrastus (2.5.1) on the toil and tears of primitive gatherers, and see further Cole 1967 for rival accounts of primitive life as morally superior or as miserable, and Saunders (forthcoming) on the position of Dicaearchus. 548. Dicaearchus, unlike Theophrastus (2.27.1), does not envisage cannibalism as a response to scarcity. Aristotle discusses residues, perittômata, in GA 1. They result from useful and from useless food, and may be formed before or after food becomes blood. Useless food makes no contribution to the organism, and causes harm if much is eaten (725a4-7). Useful residues include semen and menses (interpreted as the female contribution to the embryo), useless residues include excrement (cf. 1.47.2). Plutarch (Flesh-Eating 994f-995a) argues that the human body is not adapted to digest meat; and in Isis and Osiris 352d-f he says that Egyptian priests shave all body hair and wear linen because all residues, including the growth of wool, hair and nails, are impure. 549. ‘Enough of acorns’: see on 2.5.6. The passage from ‘so the leading characteristics’ to ‘make the change’ sounds like one of P.’s summarising comments before he moves on to the next phase of human life, and sections 7 and 8 are clearly summaries. But it may well be Dicaearchus who explained why a life of privation came to be called ‘golden’ (Saunders forthcoming, Schütrumpf forthcoming). 550. ‘laying hands on’ translates haptesthai, which P. regularly uses for eating animals (e.g. 2.31.2-3). 551. That is, it is not just an imaginative reconstruction by Dicaearchus: did he imply that other versions, e.g. the Epicurean ‘long genealogy’ (1.7.1) were? (The researchers may have remembered the cattle-raids, predating the Trojan War, described by Nestor in Iliad 11.670-762.) 552. ‘What counts as useful’ apparently refers to resources and technical discoveries, not, as in the Epicurean account of primitive life (1 chs 7-12), the realisation that survival is helped by a ban on homicide within the human group. Here humans assemble (athroizein) to compete with other groups for resources, whereas in the Epicurean account (1.11.1) they do so for added security. (In the MSS, the phrase ‘little by little’ modifies ‘as time went on’: Nauck prints this, Segonds prints Nauck’s revised word-order.) 553. Nauck has thaumaston, ‘it is amazing’, Segonds thaumazô, ‘I am amazed’; there is no discussion in either app. crit. See 1.4.1-6.1 for Stoic and Peripatetic arguments that the attempt to treat animals justly, i.e. to kill them only in self-defence, makes it impossible to behave justly. It was probably P., not Dicaearchus, who connected abstinence with the golden age and meat-eating with injustice (cf. 3.27.1, 3.27.8). Whereas Theophrastus said that meat-eating resulted from famine and war, because of food shortage (2.12.1) and erosion of fellow-feeling (2.22.1), Dicaearchus appears to have argued (4.2.7) that war resulted from competition for herds, because now there was something worth fighting for. 554. P. moves from the primitive life of all Greeks to the distinctive lifestyle of one Greek people. Subsequent examples are all of spiritual elites within a given society (4.5.3); P.’s Spartans (a social elite, though he does not say so) are similarly protected by a way of life which excludes influences alien to their purity. The detailed account of Spartan customs, irrelevant at first sight, describes a society in which (as in Dicaearchus’ primitive Greece) luxury, greed and competition have no place. It connects with P.’s advocacy of simplicity in book 1, and offers an account of frugal and scandal-free dinners which philosophers could safely attend (contrast 1 chs 36-41). P.’s material comes from Plutarch (acknowledged in 4.3.8)

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Notes to pages 102-104 Lycurgus 8-10 and 12, and detailed comparison is possible (Segonds 1995, xv-xix). Plutarch advanced vegetarian arguments in Flesh-Eating and Animal Cleverness (both extensively used by P.: see on 1.4.4 and 3.18.3), but it is P. who presents the Lycurgan settlement as essentially vegetarian. He begins by acknowledging that people already ate meat, but ends (4.5.2) with an argument that abstinence was appropriate to Spartan lifestyle. 555. ‘not by herds  but’ is P.’s comment; cf. 4.2.7 for herds and excessive possessions. P. could have added (contrast 1.27.1) that this diet was thought adequate for a nation of soldiers, but it would not suit him to associate abstinence with war; the closest he comes is the reference to bravery in 4.5.2. 556. P. omits Lycurgus’ failure to redistribute movable property. 557. Plutarch explains that Lycurgus had the iron treated with vinegar to make it fragile, so it could not be die-cast. 558. P. does not add that Lycurgus (according to Plutarch 27.6) also restricted travel abroad; cf. 4.7.1, Egyptian priests eat no imported food or drink, and 4.8.4, they leave Egypt only by royal commission. 559. Critias: one of the Thirty Tyrants, a pro-Spartan oligarchy which governed Athens in the last years of the fifth century BCE. He wrote a Spartan Society (Athenaeus 11.483b). 560. F512 FHSG. 561. P. omits Plutarch’s ch. 11, on resistance to Lycurgus. 562. P. omits a third, non-moral, suggestion (edôdê, ‘foodstuff ’, prefixed by an arbitrary ph). 563. ‘extras’ translates opsônia, a diminutive of opson (see on 3.19.1): probably meat. P. does not mention that the notorious Spartan ‘black broth’ was made with pork and pigs’ blood. He also omits Plutarch’s comments on sending a share to the mess when dining at home (and on the victims) because a sacrifice or hunting had made one late for the communal meal. 564. MSS paideias eleutherias, ‘free / liberal culture’; MSS of Plutarch paideutas eleutherious, ‘free / liberal educators’. Nauck compromises with paideutas eleutherias, ‘educators of freedom’, Segonds accepts van Herwerden’s emendation to paidias, ‘fun’, and prints paidias eleutherias, in effect ‘fun suitable for free men’, which he translates ‘licence modérée’. 565. The citation from Plutarch ends here. 566. cf. 1.28.3-4: legislation is for ordinary people and inferior to the divine unwritten law. 567. brôsis often connotes ‘eating meat’ rather than just ‘eating’. 568. P. again uses Epicurean keywords, ‘security’ and ‘advantage’, and exploits the Epicurean argument (cf. 1.12.2-4) that not all laws are appropriate for everyone. 569. For the ‘child from the hearth’ as a representative of Athens, see on 1.1.2; for the priestly lifestyle, cf. 2.3.2 and note. 570. After this attempt to equate the sum of particular abstinences with general abstinence (cf. 4.18.10 for the same argument applied to the individual), P. moves at once to a non-Greek priesthood. Greek tradition (cf. 2.3.2 and note) did not supply suitable examples of an ascetic religious elite, unless he had been prepared to develop the tradition on Pythagoras and his followers as Iamblichus did in Pythagorean Life. It is puzzling that he did not do so: he collected the material in his life of Pythagoras (part of the Philosophic History, which was probably an early work), but Abst. makes remarkably little use even of well-known Pythagorean customs which could not be said to violate religious secrecy (see on 2.36.5, and see further Clark 2000). The philosopher Numenius (late second century CE), in his On

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Notes to page 104 the Good (fr. 1 des Places), chose the same four ‘barbarian’ peoples (named in a different order, Brahmans, Jews, Magi and Egyptians) to integrate with Platonism. Numenius was studied in the seminar of Plotinus, to the extent that Plotinus was accused of plagiarism (Life of Plotinus 14, 17), and he may well have supplied some of P.’s material. 571. Chaeremon was a philosopher of the mid-first century CE, possibly Chaeremon son of Leonidas who was a member of the Alexandrian embassy to the emperor Claudius in 41 CE; according to the Souda he was tutor to Nero and (perhaps) librarian at Alexandria in succession to Apion. P. calls him a Stoic (see further Frede 1989), and (in the fragmentary Letter to Anebo) a hierogrammateus, i.e. a priest in the Egyptian hierarchy who was a scribe and scholar (see on 4.8.5). He was thus the ideal interpreter of Egyptian religion, for Plutarch and Iamblichus as well as P., explaining the priestly lifestyle and the theological content of myth and ritual in recognisably philosophic terms. He wrote an Egyptian history and treatises on hieroglyphs and on comets. Fragments ed. and tr. van der Horst 1984: Abst. 4. 6-8 = fr. 10, with the (pre-publication) text of Segonds, but Segonds 1995: xxiv thinks ch. 8 is P.’s development rather than Chaeremon’s text. This is debatable: ch. 8 includes comment by P., but the first sentence of 4.9.1, ‘such is the evidence ’, sounds like P.’s usual signal for recapitulation of his source. Festugière 1944: I.28-30 translates 4.6-8 into French; Fowden 1986: 54-5 offers a free English translation of 4.6.1-7 and 4.8.1-4. 572. ‘Contact’ translates epimixia, which occurs also in Philo, On the Contemplative Life 20. This account of the Jewish ascetic Therapeutai, who avoid contact with outsiders, has other resemblances (noted ad loc.) with Chaeremon’s account of Egyptian priests, and indeed with Josephus’ Essenes (see on 4.11.2): Philo begins by contrasting the active Essenes with the contemplative Therapeutai. Chaeremon, an Alexandrian Greek and Egyptian priest, may have aimed to rival the account of holiness given by Philo, an Alexandrian Jew (Philo ibid. 8-9 attacks Egyptian animal-worship), but they also had common expectations of the philosophic life. The Therapeutai would have been useful to P.: according to Philo, they avoid the distractions of cities (22); leave their families without a backward look (18, cf. 4.17.7); never eat until sunset because the needs of the body are for the dark, and sometimes forget to eat until the third or even the sixth day because they are banqueting on philosophy (34-5). 573. ‘vision’ translates theasis, a rare word which (Segonds 1995: 50 n. 47) implies the physical experience of looking at the images; Nauck conjectured (but did not print) therapeia, ‘worship’. Roman tax regulations (the Gnomon of the Idios Logos, 71) confirm that priests had no other occupation. 574. ‘discipline’ translates askêsis. 575. Nauck reads noun, ‘intellect’, for MSS bion, ‘life’. Segonds retains bion but translates ‘tient l’intelligence en éveil’. 576. ‘Holiness’ translates hagneia, which connotes both fasting and purification (see on 1.57.4), and ‘enclosures’ translates hagneutêria, literally ‘places of holiness’. But both text and interpretation are in doubt. (a) theôroumenoi, here translated ‘seen by’, may be middle not passive; if so, the meaning is ‘in contemplation they associated neither with their closest kin and compatriots nor with almost anyone else, except ’ (b) ‘because’ translates hêi, ‘in that’, suggested by Festugière (1950: 28) and followed by Segonds. Nauck suggested hate, also meaning ‘in that’, but printed the MSS ê, ‘or’: the sentence would then mean ‘did not associate with their closest kin and compatriots and were not seen by almost anyone else , or lived in ’ Van der Horst reads katanemomenois at the end of

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Notes to pages 104-106 the sentence, and interprets ‘[associated with almost no one except ] or with those who divided the hagneutêria amongst themselves’. 577. ‘Indication’ translates endeixis, a Stoic technical term used when the sign (word or event) signifies the nature of the thing signified (see further Tieleman 1996: 64). ‘Natural principle’ translates phusikos logos: the Stoics interpreted myth as an allegorical expression of the workings of nature (a famous example is Hera as aêr, air). Cf. Plutarch 367c-e on Stoic interpretations of Egyptian myth, and Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.1.1, citing Plutarch (fr. 157 Sandbach) for the claim that ‘the ancient phusiologia, among Greeks and barbarians alike, was a phusikos logos veiled in myths’. 578. Philo (Contemplative Life 30-1) says that the Therapeutai controlled their gaze and kept their hands hidden, i.e. made no gestures. 579. cf. 4.2.4 on food ‘stronger than nature’, i.e. indigestible. Hyssop was thought to be warming, and therefore (Dioscorides 3.25) useful for stomach trouble, because digestion was thought of as a process of cooking. Philo (Contemplative Life 37) says that the delicately nurtured among the Therapeutai flavour their bread with hyssop. Christian monks (T. Shaw 1998: 13-14) often used bread with salt as the basis of a fasting diet, but this was dried bread (paxamatia): perhaps the Egyptians were wary of fresh-baked bread, a cooked food which might be indigestible. 580. Nauck emended topos, ‘place’ or ‘region’, to poros, ‘resource’. 581. cf. the prohibitions listed in Leviticus 11.1-19. Bernays (1866: 150) wanted to supplement P.’s text from Jerome (Against Jovinian 2.13, PL 23.316), who refers to Chaeremon but gives a much shorter account, mostly summarised from P. (see on 4.22.7). Jerome asserts that Egyptian priests always abstained from meat and wine, and says (316b) that eggs were considered to be liquid flesh, and milk to be blood with a different colour (it was a widespread medical opinion that milk was a transformation of blood). Herodotus (2.37) and Plutarch (353cd) confirm abstinence from fish. 582. Literally ‘calf-sealers’, those who marked calves suitable for sacrifice. Plutarch (363ab) says the animals chosen were those into which the souls of bad people had metamorphosed. 583. Would the dove be contaminated by miscegenation with a bird of prey (4.7.2), or would it be wrong to eat the potential offspring of the falcon? See 4.9.7 for the falcon’s symbolic status. 584. ‘This is the time when’: so MSS ho de khronos houtos. Nauck prints this, but Segonds prints Nauck’s emendation tropos, ‘way’, for khronos, ‘time’. Plutarch (352f) says that Egyptian priests do not eat most pulses, or mutton or pork, because these foods produce too much residue (perittôma, see on 4.2.4). Intercourse with males, cf. 4.20.3 (4.6.6 seems to leave little scope even for intercourse with wives). 585. Nauck printed his conjecture mête periaptois mêt’ epôidais, ‘neither amulets nor incantations’, but the MSS reading mête peripatois ê aiôrais (cf. Plutarch Mor. 793b), ‘neither walks nor swinging’, makes sense if aiôra, literally ‘swinging’, is interpreted as gestatio, ‘carriage-exercise’. Doctors often prescribed this, because it provided quite vigorous jolting and shaking. Jerome (see on 4.7.2) says (316c) ‘they dry out, by extreme restriction of food, the humours of the body which arise from leisure and from staying in one place’. 586. This translation follows the MSS. Segonds, in agreement with van der Horst, brackets ‘or four’ and ‘evening’ (a duplicate of sunset?); Nauck bracketed ‘three or’. Extant Egyptian hymns are for three times of prayer. The Therapeutai prayed at sunrise and sunset: Philo, Contemplative Life 27.

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Notes to pages 106-107 587. ‘Holy’ translates hosion, ‘religiously acceptable’. Plutarch (353d) says that they consider the sea to be an alien element. 588. Greek authors used ‘prophets’ for the highest rank of priests, called by the Egyptians ‘servants of the god’ (van der Horst 1984: 61 n. 56). Hierostolistai robed the images of the gods; hierogrammateis (such as Chaeremon) not only wrote sacred documents, but identified sacred animals and suitable priests; hôrologoi were astronomers, who also determined the timing of ceremonies; pastophoroi carried sacred objects; neôkoroi were curators of temples. 589. This sounds like P.’s usual formula for ending a citation and drawing an implication which may not be in his source (cf. 4.2.9, 4.5.2), but ch. 9 may also use material from Chaeremon (Segonds 1995: xxv-xxvii). 4.9.7-9 has material in common with Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 380f-382c. 590. cf. 4.10.1. 591. ‘To represent the gods’ translates eis theopoiian. Christian authors used this word to mean literally ‘making gods’ out of wood or stone. Plutarch (377c) appears to use it for ‘the origin of gods’: ‘provided they do not make  marsh and lotus the only theopoiia and deprive other people of great gods’. 592. ‘Sometimes below and sometimes on top’ comes at the end of the Greek sentence, but must go with ‘bodies of birds and of humans’. Nauck’s punctuation leaves this unclear, but Segonds makes the intervening words a long parenthesis. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 3.12 = fr. 10 Bidez, pp. 20*-21*) cites examples from P.’s Cult Statues. 593. ‘Foster-brothers’ translates suntropha; cf. 1.10.1 for suntrephesthai used of groups that feed together. 594. In this interpretation, lion, ox, dog, wolf. Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 3.4.8) has Kynopolites not Lykopolites, the MSS vice versa. 595. Nauck follows Reiske in declaring a lacuna within this sentence. It seems unnecessary. 596. Sarapis: this cult, identifying Osiris with the deified Apis bull Osor-Hapi, was given official support by the first Ptolemies (early third century BCE) because it could accommodate both Greek and Egyptian religious expression. See further Fraser 1972: 246-76; Fowden 1986: 18-21. 597. The MSS are confused, but the general sense is clear. 598. The last sentence is probably P.’s comment. He used the same example in Cult Statues fr. 10 Bidez (p. 22*, cited by Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 3.12.5). Minucius Felix, Octavius 29.4, uses the story to make the point that the man must know he is not a god. 599. ‘Close association’ translates suntrophia: see on 4.9.3. 600. cf. P. On Cult Statues fr. 10 Bidez (= Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 3.12.2): the falcon symbolises light and breath because it soars to the heights, and the statue of a man with the face of a falcon shows that light and breath are received from the sun (cf. Plutarch 371e). Souls have divinatory power when freed from the body: see on 4.10.1 (and cf. 2.51.3). ‘Sanctifies images’ translates telein agalmata: this may allude to the theurgic practice of telestikê, invoking a deity to enter the image and prophesy. For divine presence in images, cf. Plotinus, Ennead 4.3.11; for ‘telestic’, cf. the Hermetic treatise Asclepius 24 (Copenhaver 1992: 81), and see further Lewy 1956: 495-6. ‘Dwells in temples’ translates Toup’s emendation oikein, ‘dwell’, for MSS kinein, ‘move’. Segonds accepts the emendation, Nauck prints the MSS reading. 601. ‘Image’ translates eikôn: cf. 2.26.5, 3.27.2. The sun’s (apparent) movement is in the opposite direction to the sphere of fixed stars (Plato, Timaeus 38D).

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Notes to pages 107-108 Plutarch (355a) explains that the mud provides food and a place to be born; this, presumably, symbolises the sun’s life-giving relationship to earth. 602. Plutarch (380f-381d) goes into more detail about the significance of other animals. 603. P. may be countering Plutarch, who says (379d) that Egyptians think certain animals are sacred to certain gods, but ordinary Egyptians worship animals as gods, which is silly. P. is more explicit in On Cult Statues fr. 10 Bidez (= Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 3.12.6): ‘that they did not think animals are gods, but made them images and symbols of the gods, is demonstrated by the fact that in many places they bring oxen for sacrifice to the gods in ceremonies and feasts.’ On koinê phora, ‘general opinion’, see 2.40.5 and note. 604. ‘towards animals’: the MSS have only kai ta zôia, ‘and animals’, which Nauck brackets; Segonds conjectures pros ta zôia, ‘towards animals’. 605. cf. 4.9.1: ‘almost the same soul’ in humans and animals, but Plutarch (379f) says that Egyptian reverence for animals is not to be explained by reincarnation. The soul divines only when detached from the body (2.51.3), that is in prophecy or sleep, but will do better when entirely detached by death: Cicero On Divination 1.63 and 113. Iamblichus, Mysteries 3.3 (106-8) enlarges on sleep. 606. Possibly the historian cited by Athenaeus 251d. 607. The Greek here is difficult: probably gastera, ‘belly’, should be understood as the object of hubrisai, ‘do violence to’. According to Plutarch (Flesh-Eating 996e), the Egyptians cut up the entrails and throw them away; in Seven Sages 159b he says they cut the body open, expose it to the sun, then throw some parts into the river. 608. P. sets the Jewish philosophers (4.11.2) in the context of specific abstinences by all Jews, to which he returns in 4.14.1-2; for the Jews as a nation of philosophers, cf. 2.26.3 (from Theophrastus). He suggests here that the tradition was eroded, except for abstinence from pigs (cf. 1.14.4), by successive invasions. Antiochus IV Seleucus repressed the revolt of the Maccabees in 169-7 BCE, and established Greek cult, complete with the sacrifice of pigs, in the Temple (the ‘abomination of desolation’ of 1 Maccabees 1.54); P. demonstrated that the book of Daniel belonged to this period (Casey 1976). Pompeius entered the Holy of Holies in 63 BCE; Titus sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE; the temple was finally destroyed in 132 CE, after the Bar-Kochba revolt, and its site was ploughed. 609. Josephus (BJ 2.119) describes the sects as philosophies, but P. has (unexpectedly) modified his description of the Essenes: ‘the third, which is also thought to practise sanctity [semnotêta askein]’. 610. Jerome (Against Jovinian 2.14) borrows these references and renders Against the Greeks as Against Apion. This work does not mention Essenes, but chs 18-32 are a general account of Jewish law, and P. takes from 2.29.213 the comment (4.14.2, see note) that Jews are forbidden to kill animals who take refuge with humans, animals who work for humans, and young animals together with their parents. Antiquities 18.11 and 18-25 does discuss Essenes; Josephus also comments at 15.10.4 that the Essenes practise the lifestyle introduced to the Greeks by Pythagoras. But P. follows the fullest account, Jewish War 2.119-33 and 137-59 (see Vermes and Goodman 1989: 37-47 for a translation of 119-59 and for comparative material). P.’s various omissions (see subsequent notes) make the structure of Josephus’ narrative even more puzzling. Rajak 1994 suggests (149-50) that Josephus followed Greek philosophical ethnography in moving from family to household to city and exchange, then to cult and hierarchy, education, legal system, and resultant character. 611. Josephus adds, at the end of his account (Jewish War 2.160-1), that some

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Notes to pages 108-110 Essenes do marry, and this is confirmed by the texts found at Qumran (for which see Beall 1988). Here, P. omits the comment ‘convinced that no woman would remain faithful to one man’. Segonds ad loc. notes the relevance of P.’s own (later?) experience. He wrote to his wife (To Marcella 1) ‘I chose to have children who were lovers of true wisdom; yours too, if, brought up by us, they embraced right philosophy’. Marcella was the widow of a fellow-student and mother of seven children; P.’s marriage to her may have been celibate. Cf. Life of Plotinus 9 on the orphan wards brought up by the celibate Plotinus. 612. The belief that oil contaminates is confirmed by the Qumran texts (see further Beall 1988: 45-6; it may be oil that is not ritually pure). It seems out of place in a discussion of property rules, but Josephus has several such odd juxtapositions. Dry skin: cf. Athanasius (Life of Antony 7), who says that Antony disapproved of oil because it relaxes the body. Taylor translates aukhmein (here translated ‘dry skin’) as ‘squalor’: this is understandable, because lack of oil shows neglect of the body, but his anti-Semitic footnote is not. White clothing immediately shows contamination by dirt or blood (cf. 2.45.2; also Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 153 and Philo, Contemplative Life 66); and Jewish priestly garments were of white linen (Exodus 28.39-42). 613. The Greek is unclear. Nauck accepted Bekker’s emendation to Josephus, hairetoi for adiairetoi: ‘elected by all for special services’. 614. But, according to Josephus (Jewish War 2.125), they do go armed, because of brigands. P. also omits the Essene in each city who is responsible for visitors, and a comment that the clothing and deportment of Essenes is like that of children who fear their tutors. 615. Probably a blessing of the light as a manifestation of God: cf. 4.13.5, ‘the rays of God’, and perhaps 2.26.2 ‘the All-Seeing’. 616. ‘Pure and holy’ is P.’s addition; Qumran was not vegetarian (Beall 1988: 63). He has left out ‘honour God as the khorêgos of life’, i.e. the one who provides. 617. P. leaves out Jewish War 2.134-6: gifts to those in need, control of anger, and research on medicines. 618. ‘Purer share’, reading katharôteron as Nauck and Segonds; Josephus has katharôterôn, ‘shares in purer waters’. 619. lêsteia, conventionally ‘brigandage’, is associated with resistance to lawful government (as in the case of the two lêstai crucified with Jesus). This oath is oddly placed between two on safeguarding sacred teachings (discussion in Beall 1988: 85-7). Taylor (as on 4.11.6) has an anti-Semitic footnote. 620. P. has, confusingly, shortened Josephus’ text (Jewish War 2.143): ‘with such oaths they secure those who enter; those who are found guilty of serious offences they expel’. 621. ‘in desperate straits’: Josephus (Jewish War 2.144) has ‘at their last gasp’. P. omits (Jewish War 2.145-7) Essene administration of justice, reverence for the lawgiver, obedience to elders and to the majority, rules on spitting, and strict Sabbath rules. 622. P. has again modified Josephus, who says (Jewish War 2.147-8) that the Essenes not only prepare their food a day ahead so as not to kindle fire on the Sabbath, but will not even move a piece of equipment or apopatein (euphemistic ‘withdraw’). P. has added ‘rest’, anapausis (the word also used in the Septuagint for Sabbath rest), but omitted (149-51) a further comment on sanitary practice, the division of Essenes into four groups, their long life, and their belief that a glorious death is better than immortality. 623. Josephus (Jewish War 2.152) says this specifically of the war with the Romans.

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Notes to pages 110-112 624. Josephus (Jewish War 2.155) has the souls ‘drawn into bodies as if into prison by some natural spell’, iungi tini phusikêi. P. retains the metaphor of prison (cf. 1.33.2) but replaces the metaphor of spellbinding with ‘inclination’ and ‘involvement’, cf. 1 ch. 30 and notes. He also omits Josephus’ account of Essene beliefs about the afterlife (Jewish War 2.155-8). 625. cf. 4.9.7: the soul is already liberated from the body. ‘From such a lifestyle  reasonably’ is P.’s introductory phrase, and Josephus (Jewish War 2.159) says that the Essenes profess to foretell the future. 626. This summary of food rules is not from Josephus: it assimilates Jewish kashrut regulations to the pattern of ‘specific abstinences’. (P. does not mention that when people were given permission to eat animals (Genesis 9), they were forbidden to eat meat with the blood.) The rules apply to all Jews, not just to all Essenes. Josephus Against Apion 2.29, the source for paragraph 2, is also about ‘us’. ‘The lawgiver’ of paragraphs 2-3 is Moses. 627. ‘To say nothing of eating them’ is P.’s addition to Josephus, Against Apion 2.29.213. These rules are not explicit in Mosaic law. Deuteronomy 22.6-7 says that the mother bird should not be taken together with the eggs or nestlings (so that she will produce more?); Exodus 23.4-5 says that you must take back the strayed ox or donkey of a (personal) enemy, and must help if his donkey has fallen under a load. Josephus perhaps referred to a development of these rules (analogous to the development of kashrut rules from ‘do not stew a kid in its mother’s milk’). A similar development is cited by Eusebius (Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.9) from Philo, Hypothetica: ‘not to make desolate the nesting of birds in the house, or reject the supplication of animals that take refuge’. 628. On proliferation, cf. 1.11.3-4, 1.16.1-2, 1 ch. 24; and, for ‘killing does not imply eating’, 2.4.1-2. 629. cf. 2.26.1 for the association of Jews and Syrians. As usual, P. does not identify himself as Syrian or Phoenician (Millar 1997, Clark 1999). 630. Neanthes: FGH 84 F32; probably third century BCE and one of P.’s sources for the life of Pythagoras who was, he said (Life of Pythagoras 1.1) a Syrian from Tyre (P. does not exploit this link with his own home town). Asclepiades: FGH 752; this is the only known fragment, probably cited by P. from Neanthes, but he might be the source for the Cypriot human sacrifice described 2.54.3-55.1. Pygmalion of Tyre was the brother of Dido, Pygmalion of Cyprus fell in love with a statue; both legends are undatable. 631. Probably from The Superstitious Man; see Gow and Sandbach 1973: 720-1. ‘The goddess’ is the Syrian Goddess, Atargatis of Hierapolis, where her sanctuary had a lake with sacred fish; see further Turcan 1996: 133-43. For sackcloth and ashes (or dust and ashes) as a sign of repentance, cf. Matthew 11.21: ‘if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes’. 632. A standard comment (see further de Jong 1997: 400), deriving from [Plato], First Alcibiades 122a: mageia is therapeia, worship of the gods. 633. Literally, a teacher of magika. This is not confirmed by the extant inscriptions, which present him only as a Zoroastrian, not as a magos. 634. MSS Sumboulos, but Jerome’s Eubulus is generally accepted. This may be Euboulus of Athens, the Platonist head of school, who sent Plotinus some works on which P. reported (Life of Plotinus 15); but not if P. cites this Euboulus via the earlier (second century CE) philosopher Numenius (see further Turcan 1975: 23-43). In On the Cave of the Nymphs 6, P. cites Euboulos (perhaps from Numenius, cited ibid. 17) for a Platonist interpretation of Mithraic ritual in which the cave symbolises the universe created by Mithras, and the mystery-rites symbolise

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Notes to page 112 the descent of the soul into this world and its ascent. The claims here that the Magi were divided into three groups, that they did not kill or eat animals, and that they believed in reincarnation, sound like assimilation to Pythagoreanism (cf. P. Life of Pythagoras 41 for Pythagoras learning from the Magi, and in general Turcan 1996: 195-247 for the association of Mithraism with other beliefs). There is no other evidence to support the claims, and they contradict other reports: see further de Jong 1997: 395, with 324-30 on eschatology, 338-42 on the duty to kill evil creatures, and 357-62 on animal sacrifice. Herodotus (1.140.2-3) contrasts Egyptian priests, who make it a matter of holiness to kill no animate creature unless for sacrifice, with Magi who make it a matter of holiness to kill ‘everything except humans and dogs’ (cf. Plut. 670d, 369f: they kill water-rats). 635. Jerome, Against Jovinian 2.14, says that they eat only flour and oil. 636. Metempsychosis: see on 1.6.3 (where the word used is metamorphôsis). P. continues to avoid any detailed discussion of the transmigration of souls. 637. Gordon 1980: 65 suggests that the lacuna contained ‘the same’, i.e. the Fathers were called eagles and falcons; he notes that the eagle ‘has never heard of Pythagoras of Samos, yet it abstains from animate food’ (Aelian 9.10). P., or his source, omits several Mithraic ranks which are not named after animals (see further Turcan 1996: 235-7). This passage seems to show that Mithraism was not an all-male cult, and some editors (including Nauck) and commentators emend huaina, hyena, to leaina, lioness, a female version of the rank ‘lion’. If women ever were admitted to the cult, ‘hyena’ might be appropriate, because hyenas were believed to change sex: Aelian 1.25. But the few inscriptions which mention women may show only an association with the cult, and Gordon 1980: 58-61 argues that women were excluded by a Mithraic ideology of male purity (reinforced by a general belief that ravens do not have sexual intercourse in summer, and lions do not at any time) and by being identified with hyenas, who are unclean in their sexual and eating habits and deprive men of reason (Pliny Natural History 28.92). 638. Pallas: see on 2.56.3. P. associates Mithraic symbolism and the zodiac in On the Cave of the Nymphs 24, in the context of the descent of souls to incarnation and their ascent when the body dies (ibid. 22-8). See further Ulansey 1989: 59-62. Aristotle, On the Soul 407b20-6, objects to the Pythagorean story that souls can enter any and every kind of body. 639. Aper, Scorpus, Ursus, Merulus. Segonds (but not Nauck) follows Felicianus in making P. transliterate the names as plural nouns, but not translate them into Greek (only Greek skorpios is recognisably close). P. never admits to a knowledge of Latin (see further Millar 1997), and this comment (unlike the next sentence) is still in reported speech, i.e. from Pallas. 640. ‘Demiurgic’ (craftsman) gods: see on 1.37.4 for the place of the Olympian gods relative to the One God in Plato’s Timaeus (and cf. 1.57.2, the ‘particular gods’). P. wants to show, as in his account of Egypt, that not only humans but gods have affinities with animals, and moreover that these affinities are acknowledged in Graeco-Roman culture. But this group of titles is not easy to attest in traditional cult, and may derive from Orphic (see next note) or Chaldaean texts: cf. 3.17.2 and note for Hekate. For Helios (Apollo) and the falcon see on 4.9.7; Segonds (1995: 84 n. 240) suggests that the lizard and snake are connected with the falcon through the Egyptian god Horus. P. says (On the Cave of the Nymphs 22) that the Lion in the zodiac is the house of the sun, and Plutarch (670bc) says that Egyptians associate the lion with the sun because its eyes gleam, it hardly sleeps (a strange misapprehension), and its young can see at birth. Artemis ‘she-wolf ’ occurs in a magical papyrus and an Orphic hymn (Segonds loc. cit.), and her brother Apollo has a title Lykeios, which P. (3.17.2) interprets as ‘wolf ’.

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Notes to pages 112-113 641. ‘Theologians’ here are writers of Orphic texts (for P.’s use of theologos, see on 2.36.3). There is no explicit mention of Orpheus in the surviving text of book 4, but (see on 4.22.7) he obviously needed discussion as a divinely inspired teacher who rejected animal sacrifice and meat-eating. In Cult-Statues (fr. 3 Bidez = Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 3.9.2) P. cited a long Orphic text, and perhaps connected it with Orphic doctrine (Preparation for the Gospel 3.19.12). See on 4 ch. 19 for Orphic teaching about humans, and see further Parker 1995: 483-510, esp. 498-500 for the connection of Orphism and Empedocles. Here, P. seems only to have planted allusions for those in the know. Magi, Demeter and Maia are found together in the fragmentary Derveni papyrus (cols vi, xxii, xxvi), a commentary on Orphic poems which probably continued with the birth of Persephone (West 1983: 93-8). Col. vi apparently associates birds with sacrifices to daimones, and this may help to explain 4.16.5-7 (so Tsantsanoglou 1997: 103-4, who suggests an association of birds with winged souls and therefore with Persephone as queen of the dead). Pherephatta is an alternative form of Persephone, but there is no other attestation of this etymology. P. appears to mean that Maia, qua nurturer, is the same as the earth-goddess Persephone, and Demeter is also the same (Derveni col. xxii interprets Demeter as Gê Mêtêr, Mother Earth). ‘Maia’ meant generally ‘nurse’ (or, according to Iamblichus Pythagorean Life 56, ‘granny’). P.’s readers might reflect that Maia was the mother of Hermes, the only god who could enter the realm of the dead. Compare Derveni col. xxvi (tr. Laks and Most 1997: 22): ‘ “of mother” because Mind is the mother of all other things. And “of his own [heas]” because she is good [a word-play on eus, good]. And it is also clear in the following words that it means good: “Hermes Diaktoros son of Maia, giver of goods.” ’ 642. P. moves from gods with animal affinities to abstinence from specific animals to more general abstinence which distances the worshipper from mortality. ‘Animals that have died’, thnêseida, are those that die naturally, not by hunting or sacrifice (cf. 3.18.2). There are several possible explanations for the food restrictions (see further Parker 1983: 357-65, Garnsey 1999: 8, and see on 1.2.3). Domestic birds are perhaps associated with the cock who is sacred to Demeter; fish eat corpses; beans have affinities with human bodies or souls; apples are particularly Demeter’s fruit and Persephone had to stay in Hades because she ate a pomegranate seed. 643. See on 4.16.5. More generally, birds, like apparitions (phasmata), occupy the air (whereas humans live in cold, damp places: 3.14.2), though Apuleius, On the God of Socrates 6 says that they are naturally earthy, and the air is for daimones. In Mysteries 2.3 (70.9-72.11 des Places) Iamblichus, in response to a question from P., distinguishes apparitions (phasmata is used at 70.19) of gods, daimones, angels, archangels, rulers of the world and of matter, and souls. Brisson 1992: 471, followed by Segonds 1995 (87 n. 250), connects 4.16.7 with the story P. tells in Life of Plotinus 10. In the temple of Isis at Rome, an Egyptian priest evokes the guardian daimôn of Plotinus, who proves to be a god; but it is not possible to question the spirit because ‘the friend who was also watching strangled the birds, which he was holding for protection’ (see Brisson loc. cit. for this interpretation of phulakês heneka). P. does not explain, but presumably the daimôn would not remain in the presence of death. 644. ‘wise about the gods’ translates theosophoi: see on 2.35.1. See Stoneman 1994, 1995 for other Greek versions of gymnosophists (‘naked philosophers’), Brahmans (correctly described as an hereditary priesthood) and Samaneans. P. presents them as ascetic groups who avoid civic and family commitments, but are valued by their community (cf. 4.5.3-6). 645. P. tells other stories from Bardesanes in his On the Styx (fr. 376 Smith),

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Notes to pages 113-115 where he identifies the emperor as ‘Antoninus from Emesa’: i.e. Elagabal (Heliogabalus), 218-222 CE. Bardesanes (Bardaisan), 154-222 CE, was a Christian who taught in Edessa. Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 4.30) says that his followers translated his works from Syriac into Greek. He is the central character in the philosophical dialogue Book of the Laws of Countries (tr. Drijvers 1965), a wideranging survey arguing that the stars do not determine either local laws or human behaviour. One of his examples (Drijvers 1965:43) is that Brahmans do not kill, do not worship idols, do not commit fornication, and do not eat meat or drink wine, even though other Indians may do all these things (and some even eat human flesh). 646. ‘is revealed’ translates kathoratai, as Valentinus and Segonds. Nauck prints the MSS kathorôntai, which makes no sense unless (as Reiske thought) some words have fallen out. 647. The MSS have some dittography. Nauck prints a repetition which he corrects in his apparatus; Segonds follows his correction. 648. cf. Plutarch 352d: Egyptian priests shave their hair because all residues (see on 4.2.4), including growth of hair, are impure. 649. 4.18.1-3 is almost exact transcription of Josephus Jewish War 7.352-7: it comes from the speech of Eleazar encouraging the defenders of Masada, who can see that they must die. The use of leitourgia (‘public service’ or ‘liturgy’, here translated ‘necessary service’) leaves open the question whether the soul chose to be with the body: once there, it has duties, just as a rich man has duties to the city in which he lives. Cf. Synesius, On Dreams p. 159.14 Terzaghi, cited on 1.28.1. 650. Purification by fire: cf. 2.5.2 and note. 651. A Homeric tag implying that people now are inferior to the heroes, e.g. Iliad 1.272. 652. P. evokes the argument of Hermarchus on law enforcing the general advantage, Abst. 1 chs 7-12. ‘What if everyone did that?’ is a ‘plain man’ argument: 1.16.1-2. 653. The MSS reading is odd, but translatable: literally ‘impossible for those maintaining rank by virtue to find the plan of a constitution’. 654. P. probably has in mind Aristotle’s argument (Pol. 1277b33-78b5) that manual workers (banausoi) cannot be citizens in the full sense because they cannot hold office, and that under some constitutions the law excludes them from citizenship altogether. The linen-workers of Tarsus, defended by Dio of Prusa in Oration 34.21-3, are a famous example. 655. The tax on prostitution was probably a registration tax, though Suetonius (Gaius 40) says the emperor Gaius Caligula imposed a new version. See McGinn 1989, and for Egyptian evidence, Montserrat 1996: 123-31. 656. ‘Holy people’ translates the MSS hierois, printed by Segonds; Nauck prints hiereusin, ‘priests’ (as in the next sentence), the conjecture of Abresch. ‘[eating] some kinds’ translates MSS tinôn, printed by Segonds; Nauck prints Hercher’s conjecture pinein, ‘drinking’. 657. cf. 4.5.5. 658. The Cretans, fr. 472 Nauck. The metre, anapaests, shows this to be the entrance of the chorus: they addressed King Minos, the lawgiver inspired by Zeus. (P. perhaps knew the passage because Europa, mother of Minos, was from his home city, Tyre; the phrase pai tês Turias, ‘child of the Tyrian’, has been questioned by some editors for reasons of metre.) Zeus did not have an oracle in Crete, so the ‘prophets’ must be directly inspired by him. This ‘afterthought’ supplies P. with a Greek example of abstinence and initiation, which gathers together several cults and lends itself (see subsequent notes) to allegorical interpretation: initiation into true understanding of the god, purification from the violent and flesh-eating human past, and (perhaps) Orphic mysteries which expressed these beliefs in

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Notes to pages 115 poems (see on 4.16.6) and in ritual. If P. did not offer such an interpretation in the missing final section (see on 4.22.7), he may have assumed (as in 4 ch. 16) that his readers could make one for themselves. He uses the last four lines, which summarise the basic principles of religious abstinence, as a cue for the philosophical exposition of these principles in ch. 20. 659. The Cretan god Zan was equated with Zeus (see next note); but both Bentley and Dindorf corrected Zanos to Zênos, ‘of Zeus’. The ‘hundred citadels’ derive from Iliad 2.649. The ‘Chalybean axe’ was made by the Chalybes of Pontus, who were famous for producing hardened iron (steel). ‘Fixed with bull-hide glue’ translates a debatable reading, taurodetôi krêtheis’. Pliny, Natural History 28.236 says that the best glue is made from bulls’ ears and genitals, and (ibid. 16.215) that the cypress-wood doors of Diana’s temple at Ephesus, which were glued and left in a frame for four years before installation, still looked new four hundred years later. (But Burkert 1985: 280 interprets ‘sealed with bull’s blood’, with the emphasis on a house tightly closed.) Do the lines imply more than that the very best materials were used? P. would be quite capable of producing an allegorical interpretation: cypress was associated with death, and is a landmark in some Orphic instructions for the journey of the soul after death; Dionysus was bull-horned (3.16.4), and in Orphic texts (evoked by his title Zagreus, see next note) was associated with life after death. It may be significant that (apparently) no metal is used to rivet the doors: cf. 1.38.3 and note for the soul ‘riveted and glued’ to the body. 660. An impressive assemblage of cults. For Zeus of Ida, cf. P.’s Life of Pythagoras 17: ‘Landing on Crete, Pythagoras approached the initiates of Morgos, one of the Daktuloi of Ida, who purified him with the lightning-stone [keraunia, cf. Pliny Natural History 37.132]. At dawn he lay stretched out by the sea, at night by the river, garlanded with fleece from a black ram. He went down into the Idaean cave, carrying black wool, and stayed there for the ritual thrice nine days; he sacrificed to Zeus and saw the throne which is made ready for him every year, and he engraved on the tomb an epigram called “Pythagoras to Zeus” which begins “Here lies dead Zan, whom men call Zeus”.’ The Daktuloi were magic craftsmen, associated (Hesiod fr. 176) with Rhea mother of Zeus; she was assimilated to the ‘mountain mother’ Kybele, whose ecstatic cult (based on the other Mount Ida overlooking Troy) is closely associated with that of Dionysus (see further Turcan 1996: 28-74). A bakkhos is an initiate of Dionysus; Zagreus is the title of Dionysus, son of Zeus and Persephone, in the version of his story used in Orphic texts. He is killed and devoured by Titans, then made immortal. Humans are made from the soot of the Titans blasted by Zeus’s thunderbolt, but with an element of the god. (Plutarch, Flesh-Eating 996c, interprets the dismemberment of Dionysus as an allegory of rebirth, and links it with some lost lines of Empedocles which say that human souls are in mortal bodies as a punishment for murder, flesh-eating and cannibalism.) ‘Raw-meat feasts’: the Dionysiac sacrifice of raw meat was the ritual counterpart of myths about animal or human victims dismembered and eaten (cf. 1.13.2-3, 2.55.3). For the Cretan Kouretai, who helped to guard the infant Zeus in a cave on Mount Dikte, and subsequently the child Dionysus in a cave on Mount Ida, see on 2.56.2; and see further Turcan 1996: 291-300 for this conflation of cults. 661. White clothing: cf. 2.45.4 and note. ‘The childbirth of mortals’ translates genesis brotôn: traditional purity rules banned contact with childbirth and corpses (cf. 2.50.1, 4.16.6), but P. interpreted genesis more widely as the material world of ‘coming to be’, see on 1.31.1. The ban on animate food in general, rather than on specific foods as in 4.16.6, suggests Orphic teaching. Cf. Euripides, Hippolytus 952-4 ‘show off, set out your wares by eating inanimate food [di’ apsukhou boras], take Orpheus for your leader in the Bacchic ritual, revering the smoke of many

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Notes to page 116 books’, and Plato Laws 782C ‘[some people would not make blood sacrifice or eat meat], but those who lived then had Orphic lives, as they are called, holding to all kinds of inanimate [food], and conversely abstaining from all animates’. For Orphic allusions by P., see on 4.16.6 and previous notes on 4.19. 662. P. offers a philosophical explanation of the traditional rules of purity, which prohibited contact with blood, childbirth and death, and required (usually temporary) abstinence from meat and sex. He may well be developing arguments from Plutarch (see on 4.20.5), though his usual practice is to cite first and comment afterwards. He focusses here on the ‘mixing’ (by contact or ingestion) of a live and sentient body with that which was once alive and sentient, but is so no longer. (Could it not be argued that non-sentient plant foods are the opposite of sentient humans?) Mixing ‘corrupts’ if the components lose their separate properties, and Stoics distinguished different kinds of mixing by whether the components remained in principle separable. Bodies were thought to result from different mixes of basic components: Galen, for instance, wrote three books on mixtures, and argued in The soul’s dependence on the body that the soul’s characteristics also depend on mixtures (Singer 1997: xxxi-ix). P. here assumes that mixing with body contaminates soul. When he discussed in other works the ‘mixture’ of body and soul in a human person, he said it was in a class of its own: the union is as close as sunkhusis, ‘fusion’, in which the elements become a compound and can no longer be separated, but they can be separated as easily, without loss of their properties, as in parathesis, ‘juxtaposition’ (Sent. 33 pp. 27-8 Lamberz; cf. Miscellaneous Questions [summikta zêtêmata] book 2, frs. 259-61 Smith). ‘That which is governed by nature’ is the universe, including bodies; eating any kind of food is impure in relation to the soul (see 4.20.13). 663. ‘singling out’ translates monôsis, which recurs at 4.20.9. The word is used in Timaeus 31b1 for the uniqueness of the universe. 664. P.’s comment on male-female intercourse (often called mixis, ‘mixing’) is unusually terse, but he probably means that if conception results (literally, if the seed is retained, kratêthen), the soul of the embryo will be contaminated by association with its newly-formed body or with the body of the mother. (To Gaurus ed. Kalbfleisch 1895, almost certainly by P., discusses theories on how and when ensoulment takes place.) If conception does not result, the woman’s living body will be contaminated by the death of the seed (cf. 4.20.6). In male-male intercourse, not only will the seed die, but the intercourse is unnatural because it cannot be reproductive. In any case, all intercourse or ejaculation contaminates the soul by passion; P. may have accepted the medical theory that conception, like ejaculation, cannot occur without desire. Cf. Sent. 32 (p. 34.6-10 Lamberz) on the philosophic life: ‘Desire for everything base should be excluded. He will not himself, qua himself [i.e. qua his true self, intellect], have food and drink; he will not have physical sex on impulse, or if he does, it will be only the uncontrollable [propetês, ‘headlong’] impression that occurs in sleep.’ 665. Feminised because weakened and dominated; the ‘inner male’ is an adaptation of Plato’s ‘inner man’, Rep. 589A7 (cf. 1.57.3 and To Marcella 33). 666. Iliad 4.141, a comparison with the blood flowing from a wound in Menelaos’ thigh. mianein usually connotes religious pollution. 667. The rest of ch. 20 includes various unacknowledged, and modified, borrowings from Plutarch: Table Talk 725cd for sections 4-8, and Tranquillity of the Soul 467c for the bees; Seven Sages 160ab for the Homer citation and subsequent comment in section 13 (Plutarch’s next sentence is cited in 3.27.9); Maintaining Health 135e for the Theophrastus citation in section 14.

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Notes to pages 116-118 668. Works and Days 595; cf. 2.44.2, and Parker 1983: 226, for the use of running water in purification. 669. In common usage, ‘uncorrupted’ (aphthoros) meant ‘virgin’; even first marital intercourse corrupted. The use of ‘exhalation’ (anathumiasis) seems to imply more than that corruption occurs because male seed is mixed with female body. According to Stoic doctrine (see on 1.47.2), soul was an exhalation of blood. Semen was generally thought to be blood refined by the vital heat of the male. If this is the right interpretation, the female who has intercourse would be corrupted because soul is mixed with her body even if she does not conceive (see 4.20.3). 670. A pun on thymos, thyme, and thymos, assertiveness or ‘spirit’ (one of the three parts of the Platonic soul). 671. ‘receiving impressions’ translates phantastikê, i.e. to do with phantasia (see on 1.33.1), and ‘forming opinions’ translates doxastikê, i.e. to do with doxa, ‘opinion’. Both adjectives modify energeia, ‘activity’. Opinion is based on impression, but impressions which derive from sense-perception involve thought, because without thought perception cannot recognise what is perceived (cf. 3.3.2 note); see further Blumenthal 1971: 43. So thought, which should be directed to the intelligibles, becomes involved with the material world and its effect. 672. P. is using Stoic terminology, which distinguishes mere cohesion (hexis) from nature (phusis, as in plants) and soul (as in animals and humans). 673. cf. To Marcella 26: ‘the rational soul should be taken to be the body of intellect, and intellect feeds that soul by  bringing to recognition the concepts that are in it’. 674. Plato, Ion 533E, compares inspired poets to magnetised iron which can in turn attract more iron; Corpus Hermeticum 4.8 says that the vision of God’s image draws up the soul as a magnet draws iron. Here, the magnetised iron has a ‘soul’ in that it moves, and it is made light by the pneuma, breath, of the magnet; cf. Chaldaean Oracles fr. 123 for pneuma which inspires the soul to rise. There were several theories to explain the workings of magnetism: for pneuma see further Radl 1988: 194-8, and for the many uses of pneuma as an explanatory device, Singer 1997: xii. In To Gaurus P. used magnetism as an example of natural attraction analogous to that of soul and body (p. 48.22-49.1 Kalbfleisch). 675. Iliad 5. 341-2 (cited by Plutarch Seven Sages 160ab: ‘they [the gods] do not eat food, or drink gleaming wine: that is why they do not have blood and are called immortals’. 676. F440C FHSG (and see Fortenbaugh 1984 L3 and pp. 152-4), cited by Plutarch Seven Sages 135e. 677. Hunger-suppressant: recipes in Life of Pythagoras 34-5. Cf. Plutarch, Seven Sages 157d-f, who says it includes ‘foreign honey and cheese and all kinds of seeds which are difficult to get’; and Solon’s comment, ibid. 158c, ‘isn’t it best not to need food at all?’ Body in flux: cf. 2.39.2 and note. 678. The ‘true parent’ is God. Drunkenness: cf. Corpus Hermeticum 1.27 (tr. Copenhaver 1992: 6): ‘People, earthborn men, you who have surrendered yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of god, make yourselves sober and end your drunken sickness, for you are bewitched in unreasoning sleep.’ 679. cf. 1.13.5. 680. This is a familiar range of examples, though the sources vary on the detail. Massagetai, Herodotus 1.216, Strabo 11.513; Derbikes, Strabo 11.520. Strabo does not say that the Tibarenoi dispose of their elders; he does say (11.517) that the Caspians imprison theirs and leave them to starve, and the Bactrians throw theirs to a special breed of dogs. 681. Reiske emended Demokrates to Demokritos: there is no consensus on

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Notes to pages 118-119 whether the collection called ‘Thoughts of Demokrates’ is actually the thoughts of the philosopher Democritus. See further Segonds 1995: 101 n. 348. 682. 4.1.2. 683. Fr. 84 Wehrli. Hermippus of Smyrna was a student of the scholar-poet Callimachus of Alexandria, third century BCE. He cites Xenokrates (fr. 252 Isnardi Parente), Plato’s student who was head of the Academy 339-314 BCE. 684. Hermippus’ citation of Xenokrates ends here; so does P.’s of Hermippus. 685. Probably a reference to the argument (2.10.3, 2 chs 29-30) that sacrifice and meat-eating at Athens resulted from unintentional killing and from crop failure. 686. ‘Valid for all time’ bracketed by Nauck and Segonds, is probably a gloss on ‘ruling to last for ever’ (thesmos aiônios). 687. The MSS text ends here. The Budé editors think, from comparison with the length of the other books, that not much has been lost. But this is difficult to judge, because book 3 is half the length of books 1 and 2, and the difference results from the very short (two chapters) conclusion of 3, whereas 1 and 2 have long developments on the lifestyle and religious practice of the true philosopher. Segonds, following Nauck, prints an extract from Jerome, Against Jovinian 2.14 (PL 23. 317b-319a) to indicate the likely content of the missing final pages. The first sentence of this extract probably does continue Jerome’s ruthless summarising (PL 317ab) of Abst. 4 chs 11-19 and 22 (he had used 21 in his ch. 2.6, PL 309a, and he ignored 20). It runs ‘Orpheus in his hymn utterly rejects the eating of meat. I would report, to confound us, the frugality of Pythagoras, Socrates, Antisthenes and the rest, were it not a long task which needs its own treatise.’ But the stories of Antisthenes and Diogenes which Jerome then tells are not relevant to P.’s argument, and much of Against Jovinian 2 is not dependent on P. It is much more likely that P. said, or hinted, something more about Orphic tradition, to which he alluded in references to ‘theologians’ (see on 2.36.3 and 4.16.6), and which could also be derived from the Euripides quotation in 4 ch. 19 (see notes ad loc.); that he also said, or hinted, something more about Pythagoras; and that he tried to reclaim Socrates as an example of abstinence if not of vegetarianism (cf. 1.15.3). All these would allow him to paint a final word-picture of the true philosopher.

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English-Greek Glossary absence of fear: aphobia abstain: apekhesthai abstinence: apokhê advantageous: sumphoros be advantageous: sumpherein affective: pathêtikos alien: allotrios animal: zôon (see also ‘beast’) animate: empsukhos analysis: epilogismos appetite: epithumia apprehension: antilêpsis appropriate (adj.): oikeios appropriation: oikeiôsis assimilation: homoiôsis attraction: prospatheia beast: thêrion benefit: ôpheleia cake: pelanos, popanon chef: mageiros civilised: hêmeros, asteios commensurate (suitable): summetros (be) committed: spoudazein, zêlôtês community: koinônia concept: ennoia contemplation: theôria contemplative: theôrêtikos contract: sunthêkê delusion: apatê depravity: mokhthêria desire: orexis detachment: apostasis dispassion: apatheia domesticated: hêmeros enchantment: goêteuma endurance: hupomonê essence: ousia evil-doer: kakopoios exercise (spiritual): meletê

exhalation: anathumiasis experience: peira expiation: aphosiôsis fasting: apositia first-fruits: aparkhai flesh: sarx, adj. ensarkos fleshless: asarkos food: bora, brôtos, edôdê, trophê (see Greek-English Index) fusion: sumphusis generation: genesis godfearing: theophobos ground grain: psaista harmless: ablabês holy: hagnos, hosios imitation: mimêsis impassioned: pathainomenos impiety: asebeia impression: phantasia impulse: hormê inanimate: apsukhos inclination: rhopê incorporeal: asômatos indifferent: adiaphoros injustice: adikia innate: emphutos intellect: nous intellectual: noeros intentional: hekousios, hekôn irrational: alogos just: dikaios justice: dikaiosunê, to dikaion kin: sungenês knowledge: gnôsis lack of control: akrasia lay (uninstructed): idiôtês

201

Indexes learning (thing learned): mathêma meat: kreas, brôtos, sarx meat-eating: kreêphagia nature: phusis necessary: anankaios non-rational: alogos opinion: doxa passion: pathos perception: aisthêsis piety: eusebeia proper behaviour / conduct: kathêkonta pure: katharos, hagnos purification: katharsis, hagneia purity: hagneia rational: logikos reasoning (noun): logismos reincarnation: metamorphôsis, metempsychosis related: sungenês, oikeios respect: eulabeia

sacrifice: thusia sacrilege, sacrilegious: anosios safety: asphaleia savage (animal): agrios security: sôtêria self-love: philautia self-sufficient: autarkês simplicity: litotês soul: psukhê strength (physical): rhômê superstition: deisidaimonia temperance: sôphrosunê thought (activity of thinking): dianoia uninstructed: idiôtês unintentional: akousios unprofitable: alusitelês unreason: alogia wakefulness: agrupnia wariness: eulabeia wisdom: phronêsis

202

Greek-English Index This index follows the conventions of the series, that is: (a) it is not a full index, but provides enough instances of significant words to illustrate their use; (b) verbs are given in the infinitive, nouns in the nominative, adjectives in the nominative masculine; (c) because the Greek is transliterated, the order is that of the English, not the Greek, alphabet. Segonds 1995: 111-72 provides a full (untransliterated) Greek index of words, listing all occurrences and the number of times each word occurs. Readers interested in the history of a particular word should check in the notes whether Porphyry is citing an earlier author. adiaphoros, indifferent (= making no difference), 1.12.3, 1.38.2 adikein, act unjustly, 1.4.4, 1.6.3; do wrong, 1.19.1 adikos, unjust, 2.22.2 and note aisthêsis, perception, 1.31.1; = non-sensory awareness, see 2.22.1 and note; sense 1.36.2 akolasia, self-indulgence, 2.42.1 allêlophagia, cannibalism, 1.23.1 allotrios, alien (belonging to another), 1.4.3, 3.21.5 allophulos, of another kind (species), 1.10.3-4; foreign (of another people), 1.30.2-3 alogia, unreason, 1.30.7, 1.31.1 alogos, irrational, non-rational, 3.2.4 and note on 3.2.1 anadromê, return, 1.29.4 anathumiasis, exhalation, 1.28.2 antilêpsis, apprehension (grasp), 1.33.3 aparkhê, first-fruit, 2.7.3, 2.16.5; offering, 2.28.2 apatê, delusion, 1.2.2 apeiria, inexperience, 1.35.2, 1.39.5 aphidruma, shrine, 2.35.1, 4.6.2 apokhê, abstinence, 1.3.3 aporrhoia, effluence, 2.39.2, 2.46.2 apostasis, detachment, 1.32.1 apsukhos, inanimate (without soul), 1.46.2 banausos, banausic (menial), 1.27.1 bora, food (something eaten: see also

brôtos, edôdê, trophê), 1.1.1, 2.8.3, 3.20.6, 3.26.4 brôtos, food (often meat: see also bora, edôdê, trophê), 1.13.4, 1.38.1, 1.39.4 daimôn (untranslated), 2.37.4 deisidaimonia, superstition, 2.60.1 diarthroun, articulate, 1.31.2 and note, 2.43.3; state exactly, 3.2.1; organise, 1.31.2 dunamis, capacity, 1.30.6-7 edôdê, food (edible foodstuff: see also bora, brôtos, trophê), 1.4.2, 1.12.1 eiskrinesthai, enter (used of the soul’s entry to the body), 1.19.1 empathês, emotional (impassioned), 1.34.2 emphutos, innate, 1.14.1 empsukhos, animate (ensouled), 1.3.3 energeia, activity, 1.38.4 ennoia, concept, 2.40.2, 3.3.2 epaisthêsis, awareness, 1.57.2 and note epilogismos, analysis, 1.8.2, 1.10.4 epithumia, appetite, 1.9.5 eudaimonia, happiness, 1.29.5 eulabeia, respect, 1.1.1 and note; caution, 2.9.3 eusebeia, piety, 2.14.3 exousia, freedom (to do something), 1.12.6, 1.42.2

203

Indexes pathainesthai, be impassioned, 1.44.3 pathêma, passion (experience of pathos), 1.34.4 pathos, passion, 1.30.1 and note peira, experience (putting to the test; contrast pathos), 1.2.1, 1.35.2 phantasia, impression, 1.31.1 and note philautia, self-love, 3.2.4 phora, movement, 1.9.5; koinê phora, general opinion, 2.40.5 phônê, voice, 3.3.1 and note; speech, 2.34.2; language, 3.5.3 phronêsis, (practical) wisdom, 3.9.1; intelligence, 4.9.9 phthora, killing, 1.12.4; corruption, 4.20.5; plague, 1.16.2 phusikos, natural, 4.2.3; natural scientist, 1.15.3, 3.21.8 phusis, nature, 3.10.1 pneuma, untranslated, 2.38.2; breath, 3.19.1 prospatheia, attraction, 1.30.4 and note, 1.31.5 prospheresthai, eat, 1.25.1; offer, 1.22.2

genesis, generation (coming to be), 1.31.1 and note geuesthai, taste, 2.2.2; eat, 2.27.6 glôtta, language, 2.56.1; tongue, 3.3.3 gnôsis, knowledge, 1.28.1, 3.21.6 goês, sorcerer, 2.45.1 goêteuma, enchantment, 1.28.1; spell, 1.43.1 hagneia, holiness, 1.57.4, 2.44.3; purification, 1.57.2 haptesthai, touch, 1.33.5; partake of, 2.7.3 and note hêmeros, tame, 3.4.7; domesticated, 1.9.5; civilised (humans), 3.26.2; cultivated (plants), 2.14.2 homoiôsis, assimilation, 1.54.6 and note; becoming like, 2.45.4 homoousios, of the same essence, 1.19.1 homophulos, of the same kind, 1.5.2 hormê, impulse (to action), 1.8.5, 2.38.4 hosia, holiness (conduct acceptable to gods), 2.27.2; rite, 2.27.6 hupomonê, endurance (in good sense), 1.2.1 litotês, simplicity, 3.1.1; frugality, 4.13.5

rhopê, inclination, 1.30.2 sarx, flesh, 1.3.3; meat, 1.23.1 sôphrosunê, temperance, 3.1.1 sôtêria, security, 1.10.2; preservation, 3.27.4 spoudaios, moral (morally serious), 1.44.1 sumphusis, joining, 1.29.4 and note sumplokê, involvement, 1.35.1, 3.18.4 sungenês, kin, akin, 3.25.3 sunkhusis, confusion, 3.20.5; chaos, 4.18.4 sunthêkê, contract, 1.12.5

mathêma, learning (thing learned), 1.29.1-2 meletê, (spiritual) exercise, 1.30.4 metamorphôsis, reincarnation, 1.6.3 metempsukhôsis, metempsychosis, 4.16.2 mixis, mixing, 4.20.4; intercourse, 4.7.4 mokhthêria, depravity, 1.30.7, 2.22.2 noêtos, intelligible, 1.31.2, 1.32.2 nous, intellect, 1.28.3 oikeios, related, 1.4.2 and note; appropriate, 1.45.1, 4.7.5 oikeiotês, relatedness, 2.22.2 and note oikeiôsis, appropriation, 1.7.1 and note on 1.4.2 ousia, being, 1.30.6; essence, 1.30.7

theôrêtikos, contemplative, 1.28.3 theosophos, wise about the gods, 2.35.1 and note, 2.45.2, 4.17.1 thêrion, wild animal, 3.6.5; beast, 1.4.2 thumos, assertiveness, 1.43.3 trophê, food (nourishment: see also bora, brôtos, edôdê), 1.1.1, 1.21.1; relation, 1.10.4

204

Subject Index abstinence (apokhê), not for everyone, 1.27.1, 2.3.1; abstinence from animals makes killing of humans less likely, 2.31.3, 3.20.7, 3.26.6; protection in apotropaic sacrifice, 2.44.2; temporary abstinence of sorcerers, 2.45.3; does not disadvantage humans, 3.18.4, 3.26.13; or human societies, 4.5.2, 4.5.6; prescribed for priests, 4.5.3-5; opponents of, 1.3.3; from sense-perceptions, 1.32.2; from various passions, 1.37.3, 1.40.1, 1.45.1, 1.48.1, 1.54.2; and purity, 2.47.1; and piety, 3.1.2; and peace, 4.2.9; specific abstinence, 4.2.1, 4.14.3, 4.22.1; Mithraic, 4.16.2 acorns, primitive food, 2.5.6, 2.7.1, 4.2.6 anagôgê (uplifting), 2.34.3 and note ancients, the, 1.13.1, 2.4.4, 2.35.2, 3.1.4 and note, 3.3.6, 3.16.5, 3.17.1, 3.18.1 animals (zôon, for separate species see Index of Animals); see also ‘beast’, ‘justice’; whether related to humans, 1.4.2-4, 1.5.2-6.1, 1.10.3-4, 2.26.5, 2.31.3, 3.1.4, 3.13.1, 3.26.1; similar in body, perception and passion, 3.7.2-7, 3.8.1-5, 3.25.3; differences of body do not change nature of soul, 3.8.6-9; affection for young, 3.22.7; can do wrong, 2.22.2-3, 3.10.4; virtue, 3.11.2-3, 3.13.2-3, 3.22.6-8; humans behave worse, 3.10.4-5, 3.12.4-5, 3.13.3, 3.19.3, 3.20.6; necessary resource for humans, 1.4.2-4, 1.5.2-6.2, 1.24.1; for human use (argument of Chrysippus), 3.20.1-6; may be killed in self-defence, 1.10.1-11.5,

1.19.2-20.2, 2.22.2-3, 3.26.2-4; war with beasts, 1.14.1, 1.24.1, 3.18.4; risk of over-population, 1.11.3-5, 1.16.1-2, 1.24, 4.14.3; harmed by killing, 2.12.3; choice of animals for sacrifice, 2.25.2-7; killing and sacrifice do not justify eating, 2.2.1; use in divination, 2.48, 2.51.1-3; need human care, 1.53.1; animals that live or work with humans, 1.14.3, 2.25.2-7, 2.31.1; need human society, 3.12.2; human exploitation, 3.18.5-6, 4.2.9; rationality, book 3 passim. Importance of perception and memory, 3.1.4 and note; use speech, 3.3.2-5.7; respond to human speech, 3.6.1, and to music, 3.6.2; use logic, 3.6.3; can learn, 3.6.4-5, 3.10.3, 3.15.1; aware of own interest, 3.9.2-5; co-operation and order, 3.10.6-11.1; vices (conflict with reason) 3.13.2, 3.14.1; honoured by gods and godlike humans, 3.16.1-17.2; Egyptian reverence for, 4.9.2-10.2; Jewish rules on, 4.14.1-3; philosophers as sacred animals, 4.6.2 apatheia, see ‘dispassion’ apprehension (antilêpsis) of perception, 1.33.3, 1.39.2, 1.41.5, 1.43.1 appropriation, see oikeiôsis aromatics, offered as sacrifice, 2.5.1, 2.5.4, 2.16.4, 2.17.3, 2.21.3, 2.58.5 ascesis, 4.6.3, 4.7.8, 4.9.1 (Egyptian); 4.13.6, 4.13.9 (Essene) assimilation (homoiôsis, homoiousthai) to God, 1.54.6 and note, 2.34.3, 2.43.3, 2.45.4, 3.26.10, 3.26.13, 3.27.1, 3.27.5 athletes, physical, 1.27.1, 1.33.6;

205

Indexes spiritual, 1.31.3, 1.56.3; diet of, 1.15.2, 1.26.2, 2.4.3 attraction (prospatheia), 1.30.4 and note, 1.31.5 attunement of body to soul, 1.43.1 banausic, abstinence not for those who engage in such crafts, 1.27.1 and note; excluded from citizenship, 4.18.7 barbarian (barbaros), 1.13.5, 2.51.1, 3.3.3, 3.18.4, 3.25.2, 4.5.5; (metaphor) 1.42.1 and note barley (krithos), first cereal crop, 2.6.1; offering, 2.36.4; in Sparta, 4.3.1 beast (thêrion, see also ‘animal’), not connected with humans, 1.4.2; the life of beasts, 1.4.4 and note; war with, 1.14.1-3, 1.24.1; sacrificed, 1.25.1; as medicine, 1.25.1; hunted, 3.6.3; trained, 3.6.5; weak and strong, 3.9.3; some humans more savage, 3.19.3; Pythagoreans and, 3.20.7; emotions, 3.22.3; how to charm, 3.22.4; vice, 3.22.8; slower thought, 3.23.8; Egyptian images show connection with humans, 4.9.2-3; bestial human nature, 3.20.7, 4.21.2 being, essence (ousia), eternal, 1.30.4; intellectual, 1.30.6; essence of soul not changed by unreason, 1.30.7, or by composition of body, 3.8.6; sustained by food, 2.34.4; difference not in, 3.7.1; of justice, 3.26.10 body (sôma), and soul, 1.19.1-2, 1.34.6, 1.38.3-4, 1.43.1, 1.53.3, 1.57.1, 2.37.1-3; and soul after violent death, 2.47.1-4; soul and body kin, 2.48; corpse, 4.19.2, 4.20.1; food and, 1.44.3-47.4, 1.51.1; illness of, 1.56.2-4 cakes, offered to gods, pelanos 2.6.3, 2.10.2, 2.29.1, 2.30.4, 4.22.7; popanon 2.16.4, 2.17.3, 2.19.1, 2.58.5 cannibalism (allêlophagia, anthrôpophagia) and Pythagoras,

1.23.1-2; among Bassarai, 2.8.3; because of food shortage, 2.27.1, 2.56.11-57.3; eating enemies not allowed, 2.2.1; human sacrifice and, 2.56.10; in war, 3.12.5; customary for some peoples, 4.21.2 castration, effects of, 1.2.3 note (human); 3.7.6 (animal) chain (desmos, metaphor), 1.33.2, 1.34.4, 1.38.2, 1.46.1, 1.47.2, 1.55.1, 1.56.1, 4.13.8 charioteer (metaphor), 1.43.2, 1.44.3 child (metaphor), 1.41.3, 1.44.2 clothes, removed before contest, 1.31.3-4; clean after apotropaic sacrifice, 2.44.2; white, 2.45.4, 4.19.2; Essene, 4.11.8, 4.12.2, 4.12.6 community (koinônia), animals outside, 1.4.2, 3.13.1; Epicureans on, 1.7.1, 1.10.2-4; human community necessary to some animals, 3.12.2; based on love of offspring, 3.22.7; animal communities, 3.23.3, 3.23.7 contamination, pollution, miasma from eating meat, 2.31.2, 2.50.1; pollution (miainein) does not affect the deep, 1.42.2-3; kêlis from oil, 4.11.6; molusmos is mixing of contraries, 4.20.1; pollution (miainein) from sex, 4.20.3-6; from association of soul and body, 4.20.7; from passion, 4.20.6-9 contemplation (theôria), 1.29.1, 1.29.3, 1.31.2, 1.36.1, 1.40.1, 1.52.2, 1.56.1; offered to gods, 2.35.2; contemplative life, 1.28.3, 1.56.1, 3.1.1; Egyptian priests, 4.6.3 contract (sunthêkê), 1.12.5, 1.12.6 note, 3.13.1, 3.26.6 conversation (homilia), with God, 2.50.1, 2.52.4, 2.61.4 crops (karpos), see ‘plants’ cult-statue, see ‘image’ daimôn (untranslated), divine power, 2.2.2, 2.36.5, 2.37.4-43.3, 2.53.3, 2.55.1; chief daimôn, 2.41.5; bad ones want to be gods, 2.42.2;

206

Indexes sorcery, 2.45.1; associated with meat, 2.47.3; and divination, 2.51.3, 2.52.2; good daimones warn of future, 2.53.1; blood sacrifice is for daimones, 2.58.1 death, philosophical (= detachment) 1.32.1, 1.41.1, 1.51.3; fear of death, 1.53.2, 1.54.2-3; as penalty, 2.3.2, 2.54.2; plant foods and, 2.50.2; dying for a principle, 2.61.7; death of animals, 3.26.4; Essenes and, 4.13.2, 4.13.4; Samaneans, 4.18.1-3 deep (bathos), 1.42.3 delusion (apatê), of oneself, 1.2.2, 1.3.1, 1.36.2, 1.39.3, 1.42.4, 1.51.4; by daimones, 2.42.1; by promise of advantage, 4.1.2 detachment (apostasis), 1.31.1, 1.32.1-2, 1.41.5 dispassion(ate) (apatheia, apathês) 1.30.1, 1.38.4, 2.43.3, 2.45.4; impossible to combine with pathê, 1.36.2, 1.37.1; dispassionate soul is best offering to gods, 2.34.3, 2.61.1; impassive to pity, 3.20.7 divination, messages from daimones, 2.38.3, 2.41.3-4, 2.53.1; by ingesting divinatory animals, 2.48.1; purity rules of diviners, 2.50.1; by entrails, 2.51.1-3; not needed by philosopher, 2.52.1-4; birds as messengers, 3.5.5; precognitive falcon, 4.9.7; soul divinatory when freed from body, 2.51.3, 4.10.1, 4.13.9 earth, risk of over-population, 1.16.1-2, 1.24; produces crops for human use, 3.27.10, 4.2.2; nurse and mother, 2.32.1 Egypt, Egyptian, 4.6.1-10.5; Egyptians do not sacrifice pigs, 1.14.4; on harming plants, 1.21.2; do not eat cows, 2.11.2, 2.61.7; zoomorphic gods, 2.26.5, 3.16.3; ‘the Egyptian’ on violent death, 2.47.1 and note; human sacrifice, 2.55.2; spitting snakes in, 3.9.2 enchantment, see ‘sorcery’ entrails, divination by, 2.51.1-52.2; metaphor, 2.52.4

Epicureans, 1.3.3 and note, 1.48.3; notes on 1 chs 7-12 and 1.48.3-55.4 epilogismos, 1.8.2 and note, 1.10.4 exhalation (anathumiasis), from earth, 1.28.2; from meat-eating, 1.47.2; from blood sacrifice, 2.42.3; from semen, 4.20.6 eye, of the soul, 1.43.1, 1.47.4 famine, from increase of animal population, 1.16.2, 1.24; cause of blood sacrifice, 2.7.2, 2.9.1, 2.10.3; and war, 2.7.2, 2.12.1, 2.57.3, 3.12.5; caused by bad daimones, 2.40.1 fasting, for purification, 2.44.2 fatten (pianein), scents fatten unreason, 1.34.3; tastes fatten pathê, 1.34.4; foods that fatten body, 1.46.1, 4.4.1; exhalations fatten pneuma of daimones, 2.42.3; fatten soul rather than body, 4.20.11-12 feminise, 4.20.3 fire, used for cooking, 1.13.1, 4.21.1; immortal, 2.5.2, 2.36.3-4; burnt offerings, 2.6.4; necessary, 3.18.5; Egyptian reverence for, 4.9.5; Samanean death by, 4.18.3 first-fruits, see sacrifice flesh (sarx), food, 1.1.1, 1.23.1, 1.51.6, 1.57.2; arguments against abstinence from, 1.3.3; body, 1.49.2, 1.51.3, 1.54.1, 3.7.2; of pig, 3.20.1; human similar to animal, 3.25.3; prison, 4.13.8; dead, 4.20.7; contrasted with soul, 4.20.11-12; part of body, 1.17.2; sacrifice, 2.42.3, 2.46.2; theologians abstain from eating, 2.47.3; need not eat sacrificed flesh, 2.53.3; human flesh, 2.56.10, 2.57.3; need not be eaten, 3.18.4 flowers, offered to gods, 2.6.4, 2.36.4 food, humans cook, 1.13.1-5; some animals not eaten, 1.14.3-4; case for flesh food, 1.15.1-2; reason must decide, 1.43.2, 1.44.3, 1.45.2; takes time to digest, 1.45.3-4; meat compared with fruit and

207

Indexes (dêmiourgos), 3.20.4; demiurgic gods, 4.16.5 gymnosophists, 4.17.1-18.3

vegetables, 1.46.2, 1.49.4; frugal food best, 1.48.3; preparation of food is troublesome, 1.51.1; diversity of food unnecessary, 1.51.5; and mortality, 2.50.2; humans and animals have the same food, 3.25.4; food from outside and from within, 3.27.11; right amount, 4.3.2; Spartan, 4.4.1-6; Egyptian priests, 4.6.9-7.6, 4.10.5; Essenes, 4.12.2-5, 4.13.4-6; Brahmans, 4.17.4-5; Samaneans, 4.17.8-9; plant food does not pollute, 4.20.1; feeding the soul not the body, 4.20.11-15 freedom (to do, exousia), 1.12.6, 1.42.3 and note generation (genesis), reproduction, 1.10.4, 3.22.7, 4.19.2; (world of) coming to be, 1.31.1, 1.41.4, 3.27.4 god(s), said to approve of sacrifice, 1.22.1-2, 1.25.1; relationship with god, 1.57.1-3; particular gods, 1.57.2; the god above all, 1.57.2, 2.34.2, 2.49.1; god as father, 1.57.3, 2.46.1, 2.50.1; givers of crops, 2.6.4, 2.12.2; cannot be deceived, 2.24.5; in heaven, 2.32.2, 2.36.3; Platonists on gods, 2.36.5-37.5; misguided beliefs about gods, 2.39.5-40.5; god alone, 2.49.1; ‘the greater’ 2.50.1, 3.26.10-11; philosopher as house-slave of god, 2.53.1; proper honour and obedience, 2.61.1-8; chorus of gods and divine men, 2.61.8; gods are rational, 3.8.2, 3.10.2, 3.11.3; gods associated with animals, 3.16.1-17.2; gods pardon use of necessities, 3.18.5; gods made humans for themselves and animals for humans (argument of Chrysippus), 3.20.1-6; harms nothing and needs nothing, 3.26.11; Egyptians and gods, 4.6.1-10.5; gods connected with animals, 4.16.5-6; activities of God, 4.20.15; creator

harmless(ness) (ablabês, ablabia), sacrifices must be, 2.12.3; humans naturally are, 1.5.2, 3.1.3; justice, harmlessness and likeness to God, 3.26.9-27.3; = unharmed, 2.44.4 health (hugeia), 1.2.1, 1.12.2; spiritual and physical health, 1.53.2-4; not helped by meat, 1.52.1; avoid residues, 4.2.4 and note; of Egyptian priests, 4.8.1 holiness (hagneia), = purity, often including abstinence or fasting in preparation for ritual, 1.57.2-4, 2.1.1, 2.19.5, 3.18.4; protection against evil, 2.44.3-45.4; = ritual purification, of Egyptian priests, 4.6.5, 4.6.9, 4.7.2, 4.7.5; of Essenes, 4.12.2, 4.12.7, 4.13.9; priests in general, 4.18.9; interpretation, 4.20.1-2, 4.20.9; hosiotês = behaviour acceptable to gods, in sacrifices, 2.27.1-2, 2.31.1-2, 2.33.2; hosia a word for ‘sacrifice’, 2.12.4; how achieved by people, 2.31.7; accords with justice, 3.1.2 honey (meli), use by humans, 1.21.1, 2.13.2; offering to gods, 2.6.4, 2.19.2, 2.20.3, 2.21.3, 2.26.2, 2.36.4; the best honey, 4.20.8 homicide, unintentional, 1.9.1-5 and note on 1.9.3 hymn (hymnos), to intelligible gods, 2.34.4 and note; Egyptian, 4.8.2; Samanean, 4.17.6 illness (pathos), said to require meat-eating, 1.15.2, 1.17.1-3; caused by meat-eating, 1.34.4, 1.47.2; metaphor, 1.28.2 and note; physical and spiritual, 1.53.3, 1.56.3; similar in humans and animals, 3.7.2-7; defect of relevant part, 3.24.2-5 images, of gods, 2.18.1 (hedos); 2.18.2, 2.21.3, 2.49.3, 4.9.7 (agalma); 2.26.5 (eikôn, mimêma); 3.16.3-4

208

Indexes (eidos, agalma); of god in humans, (eikôn) 3.27.2, (agalma) 4.6.6; zoomorphic, 4.9.2; scarab is image (eikôn) of sun, 4.9.8 imitation (mimêsis), of God 2.3.1 immortal(ity) (1) athanatos / athanasia, contest for, 1.56.3; human souls, 1.19.3, 1.20.1; Essenes on, 4.13.8; Samaneans on, 4.18.3; fire, 2.5.2; = the gods, 2.8.2; contrary of ‘mortal’, 3.21.1; immortals need no food, 4.20.13; (2) aiônios, everlasting, 1.30.4, 1.30.6, 2.39.2, 2.52.4, 4.20.11, 4.22.7 impression (phantasia), 1.30.1 and note; associated with passion, 1.30.1, 1.31.1-2, 1.33.3, 1.34.7; associated with daimones, 2.42.1; in animals, 3.3.2 and note, 3.5.2 impulse (hormê), 1.8.5 and note; 3.1.4 and note inanimate (apsukhos), cannot make contracts, 1.12.6; advantages as food, 1.46.2, 1.47.2, 1.49.4, 1.52.2, 1.56.1; sacrifice, 2.33.1, 2.37.3; non-rational, 3.21.2; wealth is, 4.4.3 incense, see ‘aromatics’ inclination (rhopê), 1.30.2 and note indifferent (adiaphoron = making no difference), 1.12.3 and note, 1.38.2, 1.42.5, 2.9.2, 3.25.3 injustice (also wrongdoing, Greek adikia, adikein), whether inevitable, 1.4.4, 3.18.3-5, 3.26.9, 4.2.9; whether applicable to animal-human relations, 1.6.1, 3.12.1, 3.22.7; whether applicable to plants, 1.6.3, 1.21.2, 3.19.2; of animals, 1.19.2, 2.22.2, 2.23.1-2, 3.23.3; of humans to animals, 1.19.3-20.1, 3.18.2, 3.20.5, 3.26.1-4, 3.26.7-8; good man not unjust to himself, 3.26.13; in using wool, milk and honey, 1.21.1; and sacrifice, 2.11.1, 2.12.4, 2.24.2-4, 2.60.1, 2.60.3; and divination, 2.51.2; of demons, 2.40.1; injustice is spiritual poverty, 3.27.5; result of food shortage, 2.10.3, 3.20.6;

motivated by pleasure, 3.27.1, 3.27.6; Stoics unjust if not perfectly wise, 3.22.8; banished by abstinence, 3.27.8; results from ignorance, 4.1.2; Essenes swear to fight it, 4.13.1 intellect (nous), true self, 1.29.4; needs peace and quiet, 1.31.2; turned towards itself, 1.39.2; life in accordance with intellect, 1.28.3; and abstinence, 1.46.2, 1.48.1; cannot be combined with concern for material world, 1.40.1, 1.41.1, 1.41.4; or with laws of body, 1.56.4; refrains from harm to fellow-humans, 2.31.3; nature and, 2.53.2; pure intellect the best offering, 2.61.1; rules in everything, 3.1.3; of God, 3.11.3; many people have none, 3.19.3; required for perception, 3.21.8-22.1; can choose rightly, 3.27.7; soul should be fed on, 4.20.11 intellectual (noeros), life, 1.30.1; humans are intellectual beings, 1.30.6; sacrifice, 2.45.4; nature, 2.53.2; God, 3.11.3, 4.20.12 intelligible (noêtos), soul’s union with, 1.30.6-7; hearing about, 1.31.2; attention to, 1.32.2, 1.41.3, 1.42.1; detachment from, 1.41.5; the intelligible gods, 2.34.4 irrational (alogos, also ‘non-rational’; see also ‘unreason’, alogia); animals (standard use), 1.4.1, 1.19.2-3, 1.20.1, 2.2.3 and note, 2.22.2, 2.51.2; soul, 2.47.1 and note; in what sense, 3.1.4, 3.2.2-4, 3.5.3-4, 3.6.3, 3.13.1, 3.17.3; contrary of rational, 3.21.1-4; gods never were, 3.10.2; irrational fear, 1.9.4; appetite, 1.9.5; memory, 1.10.4 and note; argument, 2.33.2, 3.19.3 Jews (Ioudaioi, Hebraioi), sacrifice, 2.26.1-4; traditions, 2.61.7, 4.11.1-3, 4.14.1-2 justice, 3 passim: only for beings ‘like us’, 1.4.1, 1.4.3, 1.5.3, 3.1.4, 3.12.1; not possible between

209

Indexes humans and animals, 1.12.5, 2.22.3; can animals be just? 2.22, 3.11.1; justice towards animals, 1.4.4, 3.12.1-3, 3.18.1-26.9 passim; kindness to animals encourages justice to humans, 2.31.3, 3.20.7, 3.26.2-7; not extended to plants, 3.19.2; unjust sacrifices, 2.22-24; represented by number, 2.36.1; God is most just, 2.41.2; piety its finest aspect, 3.1.2; justice is rule of reason, 3.26.10, 3.27.1-2; justice opposed by pleasure, 3.26.5; injustice means poverty, 3.27.5; justice on earth, 3.27.8; Essene commitment to, 4.13.1 kin (sungenês), human, 1.10.2-4; human and animal, 3.25.1-26.1, 4.22.4 knowledge (gnôsis), 1.28.1 and note, 3.21.6, 4.6.4 kurbeis, 2.21.1 and note language (see 3.3.1 note for relevant Greek words), human and animal, 3.3.4-6.1, 3.15.2; dialektos, 3.4.6 and note, 4.10.4 (Egyptian), 4.16.1 (Persian), 4.16.5 (Latin); glôtta, 2.56.1 (Phoenician), 3.4.4 (Greek), and see 3.3.2-3 note; phônê, 3.5.3 (Attic), 4.9.5 (Egyptian) law (nomos), divine law, 1.5.3, 1.28.4; Epicureans on human law, 1.7.1-12.6; intended for everyday life, 1.28.3-4, and for ordinary people, 4.18.5-10; law of body opposed to law of intellect, 1.56.4; different laws for priests, 2.3.2; made by Apis when needed, 3.15.5; laws of Athens, 4.22.2-7 (see also kurbeis) logos (untranslated, reason, discourse, argument, speech); animals lack capacity for, 1.12.6; logoi different from contemplation, 1.29.1, 1.29.5; logos decides what is necessary, 1.46.1; may be contaminated by passion, 2.34.2; controls pneuma of daimones,

2.38.2; Stoics on logos, 3.2.1; expressive logos (speech) of animals, 3.3.1-6.7; internal logos of animals weaker than human but not absent, 3.7.1-8.9, 3.23.1-3, 3.23.8; logos not exclusive to humans, 3.8.2; needed for skills, 3.15.2; loss of logos implies logos, 3.24.1-5; rule of logos helps harmlessness, 3.27.2 love (erôs), soul’s love for body, 1.19.1-2; for true being, 1.33.3; sensual, 1.34.3, 1.34.7, 2.40.3, 3.16.5 magnet (magnês), 4.20.12 marriage (gamos), philosopher does not stoop to, 2.52.3; rejected by Essenes, 4.11.4; abandoned by Samaneans, 4.17.7 meat (kreas, sarx, brôtos), human, 1.2.3, 2.11.2; when cooked, natural food for humans, 1.13.2-5; strengthens body and does not weaken soul, 1.15.1-2; philosopher does not miss it, 1.37.3; causes problems, 1.46.2-47.2, 2.45.4; bad for health, 1.52.1-4; and fear of death, 1.54.2; not necessary, 3.18.3-5; raw meat, 1.13.2-4, 4.19.2; only food of some peoples, 1.5.1, 4.21.1 medicine, remedy (pharmakon), animals as, 1.15.2, 1.17.1-3, 1.25.1; animal knowledge of, 3.8.5; metaphorical, 1.5.3; food as medicine, 1.34.5, 1.47.1-2, 4.2.4; treatment of physical and spiritual illness, 1.56.3; medical skill, 2.38.2 memory (mnêmê), and formation of society, 1.10.2-3; and passion, 1.33.3, 1.34.7; keeping in mind, 1.51.3, 1.55.4; and rationality, 3.1.4, 3.10.3, 3.21.7, 3.22.1 metamorphosis, see ‘reincarnation’ metempsychosis, see ‘reincarnation’ metensômatôsis, see note 29 milk, human use of, 1.21.1, 3.18.5, 3.19.3, 3.26.12; food for athletes, 1.26.2 Mithraism, 4.16.2-4

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Indexes moon, regions below, 2.38.2 mortal(ity) (thnêtos), are animal souls mortal? 1.19.3-20.1; detachment from mortal things, 1.30.4-7, 1.37.4, 1.41.1; needs of mortal nature, 1.45.3, 3.26.11, 3.27.6; bad men and demons like it, 2.43.3, 3.27.2; lives in the lowest region, 3.14.2; food and mortality, 4.20.11, 4.20.14 nature (phusis), human nature does not require injustice, 3.18.3-4, 3.26.9; harmless if led by reason, 3.27.1-3; philosopher investigates, 2.49.2; initiates by intellect, 2.53.2; laws of nature, 2.61.7; and logos, 3.10.1, 3.11.2; makes some animals need humans, 3.12.3; created everything for a purpose (Stoic argument), 3.20.3-6, 3.21.5; nature, perception and rationality, 3.21.1-7; demands of irrational nature, 3.27.1; natural principle expressed in myth or ritual, 4.2.3, 4.6.6 necessity (anankê), resulting from abstinence, 1.24.1, 1.26.1; requiring meat-eating, 2.12.1, 2.26.4, 4.21.1-2, 4.21.6; or sacrifice, 2.56.10, 4.22.6; or robbery, 3.18.5; good person forewarned of crisis, 2.53.1; impending death, 4.13.4; conditions required for sleeper, 1.27.3; reason required to supervise, 1.45.4; constraint of generation, 1.31.1 and note, 1.41.4; of human nature, 1.45.3; of nature, 2.49.1; necessary consequence, 2.2.1-2, 2.4.3, 2.44.1, 2.53.3, 3.26.10; need, human, 3.26.11; 3.27.3-11; 4.1.2 oikeiôsis (appropriation), 1.4.2 and note, 1.57.2 and note; of human to human, 1.7.1, 3.26.9; to God, 2.45.2, 4.9.1; beginning of justice, 3.19.2 and note; with animals, 3.26.7 oil (olive), offered to gods, 2.6.4, 2.19.2, 2.20.3; Egyptian priests

abstain, 4.6.9; Essenes do not oil skin, 4.11.6 ophthalmia, 1.28.2 and note oracle, 2.9.2-3, 2.15.1-2, 2.16.2, 2.29.3, 2.38.3, 2.48, 2.59.1, 3.16.2 ordinary people (‘the masses’, ‘the multitude’), 1.2.1, 1.8.3, 1.9.3, 1.13.1, 1.26.4, 1.28.4, 1.52.3-4; confused about gods, 2.40.3-5; ‘undistorted’ ideas about gods are right, 2.58.4; Spartan legislation for, 4.5.2; ignorance about Egyptian religion, 4.9.10; law makes concessions to, 4.18.7-8; some foods forbidden to, 4.18.9 passion (pathos), 1.30.1 and note; associated with perception, 1.31.1, 1.33.3-6, 1.34.7, 1.36.2, 1.39.4, 2.50.1; yielding to, 1.38.1; rivet soul to body, 1.38.3; attempted detachment from, 1.41.1, 1.46.2, and repression of, 3.26.10, 4.6.4 (Egyptians), 4.11.3 (Essenes); belongs to the ‘inner child’, 1.41.3; expulsion from body, 2.31.2; contaminates reason, 2.34.2, and soul, 4.20.3, 4.20.8; world-soul has none, 2.37.2; inflicted by bad daimones, 2.39.3; removal from soul, 2.43.4-5; purity protects against, 2.44.4; passions of sorcerer, 2.45.3; godly man free from passion, 2.45.4; expressed in speech, 3.3.2; pathos of disbelief, 3.4.1; illness in humans and animals, 3.7.2-7, 3.24.3, and pathê of soul, 3.8.1, 3.25.3; not altered by composition of body, 3.8.6; conquered by reason, in animal, 3.14.1; force of habit, 3.20.7; Stoics on, 3.22.3; person led by, 3.27.2; servitude to, 3.27.9-11; passible (affective) element in soul (pathêtikon), 1.33.1 and note perception (aisthêsis), by senses, 2.6.4, 2.39.1, 4.6.9, 4.20.1, 4.20.7; = non-sensory awareness, 1.7.3, 1.11.1, 2.22.1, 2.27.7, 2.31.3, 2.31.6; involvement of intellect with, 1.30.6-7, 1.35.1;

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Indexes involvement with passions of body, 1.31.1, 1.33.3-5, 1.34.1, 1.36.2, 1.37.2, 1.38.3, 1.41.5, 1.42.1; connection with rationality, 3.1.4 and note, 3.21.3-22.2; some humans live by perception, 3.19.3; perception similar or stronger in animals, 3.7.2, 3.8.1-6, 3.25.3 Peripatetics, 1.3.3 and note, 1.6.3, 3.24.6; 3.1.4 note Phoenicians, 2.11.2, 2.56.1, 2.57.1, 2.61.7, 4.15.1, 4.19.2 piety, 2 passim; 3.1.2 plants (phuta), do plants have souls? 1.6.3, 1.18.1, 3.19.2 and note; are they harmed by harvesting? 1.21.2 and note, 2.13.1, 3.18.2-5, 3.26.12, 3.27.2; human cultivation, 2.13.3; necessary for human life, 3.18.4; same basic components as animals, 3.25.3; plant food (karpos) does not contaminate, 4.20.1; food for plants, 4.20.9 pleasure (hêdonê), animal food used for, 1.21.1, 1.24.1; endangers soul, 1.33.2-3, 1.38.2, 1.42.1, 4.1.2, 4.20.3; Epicurean teaching, 1.48.2, 1.51.6, 1.54.4-6, 1.56.4; daimones exploit it, 2.40.3; not happiness, 3.1.3; animals killed for, 3.18.5; opposed to justice, 3.26.5, 3.27.1; Essenes equate with vice, 4.11.3 pneuma (untranslated), = breeze, 1.27.4; aerial body of daimones, 2.38.2, 2.38.4, 2.39.2; fattened by blood sacrifice, 2.42.3; = breath of life, 3.19.1, 3.25.4; falcon made of, 4.9.7; of magnet, 4.20.12 pollution, see ‘contamination’ Poverty (personified), 3.27.4 and note prayer (eukhê), of Jews, 2.26.3; to daimones, 2.37.5; conveyed by daimones, 2.38.3; of philosopher, 2.52.4; of good man, 2.61.4; of ungrateful humans, 3.13.3; of Essenes, 4.12.1, 4.12.3; of Brahmans, 4.17.6, and Samaneans, 4.17.9-10 priest (hiereus), at Cadiz, 1.25.4-5; of

Zeus Polieus, 2.10.2; at Salamis in Cyprus, 2.54.3; priest in Cyprus eats meat, 4.15.3; follow special rules, 2.3.2; philosopher as priest, 2.49.1-3, 2.50.1; experts in ritual, 2.49.3; abstinence, 3.18.4, 4.5.3-5, 4.18.9; Egyptian, 4.6.1-10.5; Essene, 4.12.3 primitive life, 1.4.4 note; 2 chs 5-7, 4 ch. 2 purification, purity (katharos and related words, hagneia and related words; see also ‘holiness’), after homicide, 1.9.3-4; of body and soul, 1.29.6, 1.30.6, 1.35.1, 2.45.4, 2.61.1; of character, 2.19.4; from effects of eating meat, 2.31.4-5; to make sacrifice, 2.33.1, 2.46.1; protection against daimones, 2.43.1; in apotropaic sacrifice, 2.44.2; ritual, 2.49.3; pure sacrifice, of silent thought 2.34.2; victims, 2.55.2; Egyptian, 4.6.5, 4.6.9, 4.7.5-7; Essene, 4.12.2, 4.12.7; Samanean, 4.18.3; underlying principle, 4.20.1, 4.20.9 Pythagoreans, 1.1.1 and note, 1.2.3 and note, 1.3.3; 1.23.3, 1.26.3, 1.36.1, 2.28.2 (animal sacrifice), 2.36.1 (number sacrifice), 3.1.4 (on rationality); 3.20.7 (kindness to animals) rationality, see logos reincarnation (metamorphosis, metempsychosis), 1.6.3 and note, 1.19.1-3 and note, 4.16.2 residue (bodily), 1.45.4, 1.47.2; 4.2.4 and note Resource (personified), 3.27.4 and note return, of the soul, 1.29.4 and note, 1.30.2-31.1 rivet (metaphor), 1.31.5, 1.38.3, 1.57.1, 3.27.4 sacrifice (thusia, aparkhê, see 2.6.2 note), ordered by gods, 1.22.1, 1.25.1; why called holy, 1.57.4; to gods or daimones, 2.2.2; questions for discussion, 2.4.4; original sacrifice of first-fruits, 2.5.1, and

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Indexes of other plant products, 2.6.3-4, then of living creatures, 2.7.2; should be of crops, 2.12.1-4; should be just, 2.12.3-4; should be inexpensive, 2.13.4, 2.60.1-3; instances of frugal sacrifice, 2.15.1-19.3; must be worthy, 2.23.1-2; not all humans worthy to sacrifice, 2.32.2, 2.61.5; non-sacrificers, 2.8.1; simple sacrifice allowed by civic custom, 2.33.1; philosopher’s sacrifice, 2.34.1-5, 2.45.4; different for different gods, 2.34-1-5, 2.36.3-37.5; human sacrifice, 2.8.3; first done by Jews, 2.26.4 and note; origin and development to animal sacrifice, 2.27.1-6; examples to show it does not entail cannibalism, 2.54.1-57.3; animal sacrifice, animal volunteers, 1.25.6-9; blood sacrifice, 2.7.2; offered to daimones, 2.58.1; animals cannot be sacrificed in honour, thanks or hope of benefaction, 2.24.1-5; animal sacrifice is for human enjoyment, 2.25.1-7; attracts bad daimones, 2.42.3; may be necessary for cities, 2.43.2; does not entail eating meat, 2.2.1-2, 2.4.1, 2.44.1, 2.53.3; eaten in Cyprus, 4.15.2-4; Pythagorean sacrifice, 1.26.3 and note, 2.36.1-2; bloodless sacrifice, grain, 2.6.1-2; fruits, 2.34.5, 2.36.4; cakes, flowers, honey, oil, wine (see separate entries); holocaust sacrifice, 2.26.2, 2.54.3, 4.15.2; the Diipoleia, 2.29.1-30.5; apotropaic, 2.44.2-4; Eleusis, 4.22.2; Athens, 4.22.7 sacrilege, 2.50.1; killing humans, 1.7.1-3 sage (sophos), none abstained, 1.15.3, 4.1.2; Stoic wise man, 3.2.3 security (sôtêria, asphaleia), from hostile humans or animals, 1.10.2; for the soul, 1.47.2, 1.56.2, 1.57.1, 2.34.3; of philosopher, 2.49.2 sex (aphrodisia), cannot be combined

with dispassion, 1.41.2-4; bad consequence of meat-eating, 1.47.2; not necessary for life, 1.51.6; wrongly believed to be good for health, 1.52.3; one use for money, 1.54.4; Egyptian priests and, 4.6.8, 4.7.6-7; law and, 4.18.8; contaminates, 4.20.2-3, 4.20.6 sight, effect of, 1.33.6 silence, religious, 2.1.1, 2.6.2, 2.36.5; offering to the god above all, 2.34.2; does not mean lack of logos, 3.5.4-5; Essene, 4.12.5 sleep, metaphor, 1.27.2-28.2 smell, sense of, 1.34.3, 3.8.4-5 sorcerer, sorcery (goês, goêteia), exercised by nature, 1.43.1; involves bad daimones, 2.41.5; 2.45.1-3; constrains soul by use of dead body, 2.47.2; false accusation, 4.16.8; ‘spellbinding’ by things seen, 3.22.4; by the material world (goêteuma), 1.28.1, 1.43.1 soul (psukhê), plant souls, 1.6.3, 1.18; animal souls, 1.19.1, 2.12.3-4, 4.9.1; soul’s ‘entry’ into body, 1.19.1 and note; attraction to body, 1.30.4-7 and notes; mortal and immortal souls, 1.19.3, and see Reincarnation; two souls in humans? 1.40.2; how affected by body, 1.33.1, 1.38.4, 1.43.1, 1.53.3, 3.8.6-9, 4.20.7-8; of the world, 2.37.2; pure soul safe from demons, 2.43.1; cities disregard soul, 2.43.2; after violent death, 2.47.1-4; rationality of soul, 3.1.4; soul’s fall into matter, 3.27.5; soul of divinatory animal, 2.48, 2.51.3; animal soul divinatory when freed from body, 4.10.1; Essene beliefs about, 4.13.8; Samanean belief, 4.18.1-3; soul of magnet, 4.20.12 speech, see ‘voice’ stars, visible gods, 2.37.3; contemplated by Jews, 2.26.3 statues, of gods, see images Stoics, 1.3.3 and note, 1.6.3, 3.2.1-2, 3.24.6, 4.9.1

213

Indexes suicide, 1.38.2, 2.47.1 and note; of Samaneans, 4.18.1-3 sun, visible god, 2.36.3, 3.11.3; revered by Essenes, 4.12.1, 4.13.5 superstition (deisidaimonia), prevented use of plants, 1.6.3; prompted by lavish sacrifice, 2.60.1-2; abstinence described as, 4.16.8 Syria, 2.26.1, 2.61.7, 4.15.1; (speech) 3.3.4, 3.5.3 temperance (sôphrosunê), of Castricius, 1.1.1; food that goes beyond it, 2.27.5; represented by number, 2.36.1; opposed by meat-eating, 3.1.1; chastity of ring-doves, 3.11.1; at Spartan dinners, 4.5.1 theologian (theologos), 2.36.3 and note, 2.43.4-5, 2.44.2, 2.47.1, 2.55.1, 2.58.1, 4.16.5 theurgy (theourgia), not mentioned in text; 2.34.3 note, 2.35.1-2 notes, 2.45.2 note thought (dianoia, dianoein), 1.36.4, 1.38.1, 2.45.4 (plural), 3.22.2 (dianoêsis), 4.2.4; should be focussed on reality, 1.53.2; silent speech in the soul, 3.3.2; of animals, 3.23.8, 3.24.3-4; contaminated by involvement with phantasia and doxa, 4.20.9 trees, do they have souls? 1.6.3; produced after grasses, 2.5.2; wood offerings, 2.5.5; fruit eaten, 2.5.6, 3.18.2, 3.23.6; cypress, 4.19.2; tunic (khitôn, metaphor), 1.31.3, 2.46.1 and note tutor (paidagôgos, metaphor), 1.44.2, 1.45.1, 3.26.13

unreason (alogia, alogon), deals with material world, 1.30.6-7; associated with perception and passion, 1.31.1-2, 1.33.4, 1.34.1; involvement of intellect, 1.40.1, 1.41.5, 1.42.1, 1.43.2-3, 1.44.1-3, 1.45.2; in animals, 3.2.4, 3.11.3; dominates some humans, 3.27.2, 3.27.7; pollutes soul, 4.20.3 uplifting, see anagôgê voice (phônê), expresses internal logos, 3.3.2; human and animal understanding of, 3.3.3-6.1 wakefulness (agrupnia), 1.27.2 and note, 1.28.1 water, libation, 2.20.3; lustral water, 2.27.2; in Diipoleia ritual, 2.30.1; for purification, 2.44.2; necessary for life, 3.18.4, 3.18.5; Egyptian reverence for, 4.9.5; cold baths, 4.7.7 (Egyptian), 4.12.2, 4.12.7 (Essene); as image of purity and contamination, 4.20.5, 4.20.8 wine (oinos), vintage, 1.41.2; imported, 1.51.6; offering to gods, 2.6.4, 2.19.2, 2.20.3, 2.26.2; given to human sacrificial victim, 2.54.2; ration in Sparta, 4.4.6; rejected by Egyptian priests, 4.6.8 women (gunaikes), 1.36.4, 3.27.2, 4.3.1, 4.11.4, 4.15.3-4, 4.16.3, 4.17.7, 4.20.4; sight of female (thêlu) provokes passion, 1.33.6; corrupted by intercourse, 4.20.3, 4.20.6 wool (erion), human use of, 1.21.1; offering, 2.19.2 Zoroastrians, 1.42.1 and note

214

Index of Names and Places Academy, 1.36.1 Aeschylus, 2.18.2, 3.18.6 Agraulos, daughter of Agraulis, 2.54.3 Agrippa, 1.25.4 Aidôs, personified, 3.27.10 Amosis (Egyptian king), 2.55.2 Amphitrite, 3.20.4 Anabis (Egyptian village), 4.9.6 Antiochus (IV Seleucus), 4.11.1 Antipater (of Tarsus?), 3.23.5 Antiphanes (dramatist), 2.17.3 Aphrodisios (Cypriot month), 2.54.3 Apis (hero), 3.15.5 Apollo, wolf-killer, 1.22.1; at Delphi, 2.16.2, 2.17.1, 2.59.1-2; represented by number, 2.36.1; falcon and raven, 3.5.5; Pythios, 2.15.1; Lykeios, Delphinios, 3.17.2 Apollodorus (mythographer), 2.55.4 Apollonius of Tyana, 3.3.6 (and see 2.34.2 and note) Arabs, 2.56.6, 3.4.1 Arcadia, 2.16.2, 2.27.2 Ares, 2.21.2, 2.22.1, 2.55.4 Arethusa, 3.5.1 Aristodikos of Kyme, 3.16.2 Aristotle, 3.6.5, 3.6.7, 3.7.1, 3.8.6-7, 3.9.5, 3.12.4 Artemis beast-killer, 1.22.1; represented by number, 2.36.1; Aristoboulê, 2.54.2; she-wolf, 4.16.5 Asclepiades of Cyprus (historian), 4.15.1-2 Athena, represented by number, 2.36.1; temple in Cyprus, 2.54.3; human sacrifice to, 2.56.4 and note; and owl, 3.5.5; Hippia, 3.17.2 Athens, procession honouring Sun, 2.7.1; stories about animal sacrifice, 2.9.1-10.3; the Diipoleia, 2.28.4-30.5; sacrifice of daughter

of Erechtheus, 2.56.8; laws, 4.22.2, 4.22.7 Attic (speech), 3.3.4, 3.5.3 Bactrians, treatment of the old, 4.21.4 Bardesanes of Babylon, 4.17.2 Battle-noise (Kudoimos), 2.21.2, 2.22.1 Bassarai, ate human sacrifices, 2.8.3 Bogos (king), 1.25.4 Bouseirites (Egyptian nome), 4.9.4 Brahmans, 4.17.1-6, 4.17.10 Carneades, 3.20.3 Carthage, lavish sacrifice, 2.17.1; human sacrifice, 2.27.2; Punic wars, 2.56.5, 2.57.1; the partridge, 3.4.7 Caspians, 4.21.4 Castricius (Firmus), 1.1.1 and note, 2.1.1, 3.1.1, 4.1.1 Chaeremon the Stoic, 4.6.1 Chios, human sacrifice at, 2.55.3 Chrysippus, 3.20.1 Cleomenes (of Sparta), 3.21.9 Clodius the Neapolitan, 1.3.3 and note, 1.26.4 Corybants, 2.21.1 Crassus, 3.5.1 Crete, Corybantic rites, 2.21.1; exile of Sopatros, 2.29.2-3; Istros on, 2.56.2; law of Rhadamanthus, 3.16.6; Euripides on, 4.19.1-2 Critias, on Sparta, 4.3.7 Cynics, 1.42.5 Cyprus, no pigs, 1.14.4; human sacrifice in, 2.54.3, 2.55.1; Asclepiades on, 4.15.1-2 Cyrus, suckled by bitch, 3.17.1 Cyzicus, 1.25.8 Danaids, 3.27.9 Dandamis (Indian ambassador), 4.17.2

215

Indexes Darius, 4.16.1 Delos, 2.19.3, 2.28.1 Delphi, 2.16.1-2, 2.17.2, 2.18.2 Demeter, 2.6.1, 3.5.5, 4.16.6 Democritus, 3.6.7 Demokrates, 4.21.6 and note Derbikes, and old people, 4.21.3 Dicaearchus, 4.2.1, 4.2.3, 4.2.7, 4.2.9 Diipoleia (festival), 2.30.4 Dike (personified), 3.16.6, 3.27.10 Diogenes, 1.47.3 Diomedes, 2.54.3 Diomos (or Sopatros), 2.10.2, 2.29.1 Dionysus, 3.16.4; Omadios, 2.55.3; Eiraphiôtês, 3.17.2 and note Diphilos, king of Cyprus, 2.55.1 Dokimos (frugal sacrificer), 2.17.1-2 Doumatenoi (Arabian tribe), 2.56.6 Drakon, 4.22.7 Egypt, see Subject Index Eleusis, 4.16.6, 4.22.2; 1.1.2 and note Empedocles, 1.1.2, 1.3.3-4 and note, 1.6.3 and note, 2.21.1-3, 2.31.5, 3.6.7; quoted without name, 2.27.7, 3.27.3 Epicurus, Epicureans, 1.3.3, 1.7.1, 1.12.7, 1.26.4, 1.48.3, 1.53.4 Epidauros, 2.19.5 Episkopos (sacrificer of sheep), 2.9.3 Erechtheus, 2.56.8 Eros, 3.16.4 Essenes, 4.11.2-13.10 Ethiopia (absence of pigs), 1.14.4 Etruscans, 3.4.1 (and 2.17.1 note) Euboulus (writer on Mithras), 4.16.2 Euelpis of Carystus, historian, 2.55.3 Euphantus (Egyptian), 4.10.4 Euripides, 3.25.4, 4.19.1 Europa, 4.19.2 Eurysthenes, 1.25.2

4.14.1, 4.17.1; human sacrifice, 2.56.7; do not understand foreigners, 3.3.4; language imitated by birds, 3.4.3; laws, 3.15.5; zoomorphic gods, 3.16.4; kinship, 3.25.2; primitive Greece, 4.2.1, 4.2.9; and Sparta, 4.3.5; abstinence, 4.5.5; sophists, 4.18.4 Hadrian, 2.56.3 Hamilcar Barca, 2.57.1 Hannibal, 2.57.2 Hebrews, see Jews (Subject Index) Hekate, 2.16.4, 3.17.2, 4.16.5 Heliopolis (Egypt), 2.55.2 Helios, 2.7.1, 4.9.7, 4.16.5 Hera, 2.55.2, 3.5.5 Heracleides Ponticus, 1.26.4 Herakles, 1.22.2, 1.25.2 Hermarchus, 1.7.1 and note, 1.26.4 Hermes, 2.16.4, 3.16.4 Hermione, the man from (a frugal sacrificer), 2.15.1-2 Hermippus (author of On Legislators), 4.22.2 Hesiod, 1.5.3, 2.18.3, 4.20.5; quoted but not named, 3.27.10 Hestia, 1.13.1, 2.5.1 Homer, 3.20.4, 4.20.13; quoted but not named 4.20.4 Hyperboreans, 2.19.3 Hyrcanians, 4.21.4 Ikarios (Attica), 2.10.1 Ikhthyophagi, 4.21.1 Indian (speech), 3.3.4, 3.4.5, 4.17.1 Iphikrates, 2.56.5 Iris, 3.16.4 Istros, on Cretan sacrifices, 2.56.2

Firmus Castricius, see Castricius

Jerusalem, 4.11.1 Jews, see Subject Index Josephus, 4.11.2

Gadeiroi (of Cadiz), 1.25.4 Galli (devotees of Cybele), 1.2.3 and note Ganges, 4.17.4 Gnostics, 1.42.1 and note Greek(s), Greece, meat-eaters, 1.13.5; eat only some animals, 1.14.3-4; translation into Greek, 2.56.1,

Kekrops, 2.54.3 Klearchos (frugal sacrificer), 2.16.2-5 Klymene (killed a pig), 2.9.2 Koronis, see Salamis, 2.54.3 Kouretes, 2.56.2, 4.19.1 Kronos, Empedocles on, 2.21.2; human sacrifice to, 2.27.2, 2.54.2, 2.56.1-2; age of, 4.2.3

216

Indexes Pindar, 1.36.4, 3.16.5 Plato, 1.36.1, 1.37.1-2, 1.39.3, 1.39.6, 2.37.4, 2.38.3, 2.41.2, 2.61.4, 2.61.6, 3.6.7, 3.8.7, 3.22.8 Platonists, 2.36.6 and note Plutarch, 3.18.3, 3.24.6, 4.3.8 Poseidon, 2.21.2; Hippios, 3.17.2 Praxithea, 2.56.8 Prokles, 1.25.2 Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, 4.15.1, 4.15.4 Pythagoras (see also Pythagoreans in Subject Index), 1.2.3 and note, 1.3.3 and note, 1.6.3 and note, 1.15.3, 1.23.1, 1.24.1, 1.26.2, 3.6.7, 3.26.1, 3.26.8, 4.18.6 Pythia, the, 2.15.1, 2.16.2, 2.29.3 Pytho (oracle), 2.9.2

Kudoimos, see Battle-noise Kynopolites (Egyptian nome), 4.9.3 Lacedaemonians, human sacrifice, 2.55.4, 4.3.1, 4.5.2 Laconia, 4.3.2, 4.3.5, 4.3.7, 4.5.1 Laodicea (in Syria), 2.56.4 Latins, 4.16.5 Leontopolites (Egyptian nome), 4.9.4 Libya, 1.25.3, 2.56.5, 2.57.1 Lycurgus, 4.3.1 Lykaia (festival), 2.27.2 Lynceus, 3.8.3 Maeander, 3.5.1 Magi, 4.16.1-2 Magnesian, the (a lavish sacrificer), 2.16.1 Maia, 4.16.6 Manetho, 2.55.2 Massagetai, 4.21.3 Maurousioi, 1.25.4 Melampous, 3.3.6 Menander, 2.17.4, 4.15.5 Metageitnion (Rhodian month), 2.54.2 Methone, 1.25.4 Methudrion (in Arcadia), 2.16.2-3 Milo, 1.52.2 Minos, 4.19.2 Mithras, 2.56.3, 4.16.2-4 Mithridates, 1.25.8 Muses, 3.16.4

Rhadamanthus, 3.16.2, 3.16.6 Rhodes, 2.54.2 Rogatianus, friend of Plotinus, 1.53.3 and note Romans, 2.57.1, 4.11.1, 4.13.7

Neanthes of Cyzicus, 4.15.1 Nemesis, 3.27.10 Nile, 2.5.1 Nomads, 1.5.1, 4.21.1 Odysseus, 3.14.1 Olympias, mother of Alexander, 2.60.2 Pallas, writer on Mithras, 2.56.3 and note, 4.16.4 Pan, 3.16.4 Persephone, 1.25.8, 4.16.6 Persian, 4.16.1-2; (speech) 3.3.4, 3.5.3 Pharisees, 4.11.2 Pherephatta, 4.16.5 Philinos, character in play, 2.61.2 Philo of Byblos, 2.56.1 Phylarchos, 2.56.7 Phoenicia, see Subject Index

Sadducees, 4.11.2 Salamis, 2.54.3 Samaneans, 4.17.1-18.3 Sanchuniathon, 2.56.1 Sarapis, 4.9.5 Scythians, 2.56.8, 3.15.5, 3.17.3, 4.21.4; speech, 3.3.4, 3.3.6 Seasons, the, 2.7.1 Seleukos, the theologian, 2.55.1 and note Sicily, 2.57.1 Sirens, 3.16.4 Socrates, 1.15.3, 3.1.3, 3.8.7, 3.16.2, 3.16.6, 3.22.8, 3.26.8 Sopatros (or Diomos), 2.29.1-30.5 Sophocles, 2.19.1 Sparta, 4.3.3, 4.4.3 Stasanor (viceroy of Alexander), 4.21.4 Strato, natural scientist, 3.21.8 Syria, see Subject Index Tauroi (sacrificers of humans), 2.8.3 Tenedos, 2.55.3 Theophrastus, 2.5.1, 2.7.3, 2.11.3, 2.20.2, 2.26.1, 2.32.3, 2.43.4, 2.53.3, 3.25.1, 4.4.2, 4.20.14 Theopompus (historian), 2.16.1

217

Indexes Theopropoi (family of Episkopos), 2.9.3 and note Thessalian, the (a lavish sacrificer), 2.15.1 Thoans (non-sacrificers), 2.8.1-2 Thracians, 2.56.8; (speech), 3.3.4, 3.17.1 Tibarenoi, 4.21.4 Tiresias, 3.3.6 Triptolemos, 4.22.2-5 Troglodytes, 1.5.1 and note, 4.21.1 Tynnichos (author of paian), 2.18.2

Typhon, 3.16.5 Tyrian, 4.19.2 Xenokrates, 4.22.3-5 Zagreus (Dionysus), 4.19.2 Zan (Zeus), 4.19.2 Zeno, 3.19.2, 3.22.8 Zeus, 1.5.3, 2.8.2, 2.10.2, 2.21.2, 2.52.4, 2.56.9, 3.5.5, 3.16.4-6, 4.19.1-2

218

Index of Animals, Birds, Reptiles and Fishes 2.29.1-30.4, 3.19.1; killed by Herakles, 1.22.2; plough-ox, 3.19.3; cattle as sacrifice, 1.57.4, 2.15.1, 2.16.1, 2.25.4, 2.60.3; substitute for human sacrifice, 2.55.1; cow as sacrifice, 1.25.8-9; sacrifice forbidden by Egyptians and Phoenicians, 2.11.2, 2.61.7; Egyptian regulations, 4.7.3; Egyptian deities, 3.16.3; manageable number, 1.11.4-5; use for food, 1.23.1; voice, 3.3.3; understood by cowherds, 3.5.7; mad, 3.7.4, 3.24.4; effects of castration, 3.7.6; uses horns, 3.9.2; yoked, 3.18.5; measure of wealth, 4.3.1 cock (alektruôn), effects of castration, 3.7.6; uses spur, 3.9.2; shares pain of delivery, 3.10.6; sacred to Maia, 4.16.6 corocotta, see ‘hyena’ cow, see ‘cattle’ crab (pagouros), charmed by pan-pipes, 3.22.4 crane (geranos), call of, 3.3.4; and Demeter, 3.5.5; acute hearing, 3.8.4 crocodile (krokodeilos), humans useful to, 3.20.6; Egyptians on, 4.9.9 crow (korônê), augurs and, 3.4.3; illness of, 3.7.4

anchovy (thrissa), can be charmed, 3.22.4 ant (murmêx), justice of, 3.11.1 bat (nukteris), not obviously useful, 3.20.4 bear (arktos), for exercising courage, 3.20.1; Latin name, 4.16.5 bee (melissa), human use of honey, 1.21.1-2, 2.13.2; libations of honey, 2.21.3; justice of, 3.11.1; honoured, 3.17.1; memory, 3.22.5 birds (ornithes), no justice between, 1.5.3 (oiônoi); might proliferate, 1.16.2, and take seeds, 1.24; sacrifice, 1.25.6, 2.25.4; understood by some humans, 3.3.7; rationality, 3.9.4; need humans, 3.12.2; Egyptian gods, 3.16.3, 4.9.2; made by creator, 3.20.2; Egyptian rules about, 4.7.2; Eleusinian rules, 4.16.6-7; birds of prey eat the aged, 4.21.4 (oiônoi) boar, see ‘pig’ bull (tauros), eaten by Egyptians and Phoenicians, 2.11.2; sacrificed, 2.21.4, 2.27.7, 2.59.2; tamed by music, 3.6.2; uses horns, 3.9.2; connected with Dionysus and Zeus, 3.16.4-5, and Hekate, 3.17.2, 4.16.5; used for work, 3.18.6 calf (moskhos), inspection of, 2.55.2, 4.7.3-4; sought by cow, 3.5.7 camel (kamêlos), not eaten by Greeks, 1.14.4; goes mad, 3.7.4; size, 3.23.7 cattle (bous, also ‘ox’, ‘cow’; see separate entry for tauros, bull), slaughter of ox, 1.6.3, 2.10.2,

deer (elaphos), sacrificed, 2.25.4, 2.56.4; calmed by music, 3.6.2, 3.22.4; effects of castration, 3.7.6; hunted, 3.8.4; suckles a human, 3.17.1; nervous, 3.22.5, 3.23.6; fast, 3.23.7 dog (kuôn), not eaten by Greeks, 1.14.3; rejects sacrificial offerings,

219

Indexes 2.58.4; language, 3.3.3, 3.5.6; syllogism, 3.6.3; illness, 3.7.4; sense of smell, 3.8.4; live with humans, 3.9.3, 3.19.3; need human society, 3.12.2; oath of Socrates, 3.16.6; honoured by humans and gods, 3.17.1-2; use to humans, 3.20.1; punishment, 3.22.3; cleverer than sheep, 3.23.6; madness and reason, 3.24.4-5; numbers self-limiting, 4.14.3; Hekate and, 4.16.5; used to kill aged, 4.21.4 dolphin (delphis), a metamorphosed human, 3.16.7 donkey (onos), not eaten by Greeks, 1.14.3; not sacrificed, 2.25.6; shed its load, 3.3.6; gets colds, 3.7.3; needs human society, 3.12.2; worker, 3.18.6; said to be dirty, 3.23.5 dove (peristera), male helps to brood, 3.10.6, 3.23.4; reared Semiramis, 3.17.1; ring-dove (phatta), faithful, 3.11.1; and Persephone, 4.16.5; turtledove (trugôn), raped by falcon, 4.7.4 dung-beetle (kantharos), not obviously useful, 3.20.4; Egyptian interpretation, 4.9.8 eagle (aetos), understood by Etruscans, 3.4.1; Zeus and, 3.5.5, 3.16.5; excellent vision, 3.8.3; and flight, 3.23.3; Mithraic rank, 4.16.3 eel (enkhelus), comes when called, 3.5.1 elephant (elephas), none in Greece, 1.14.4; co-worker, 2.25.6; punish cannibal soldiers, 2.57.1; strong, 3.23.7 falcon (hierax), divinatory, 2.48.1, 3.5.5; flight, 3.8.8, 3.23.3; sight, 3.23.7; and doves, 4.7.4; dear to Helios, 4.9.7, 4.16.5; Mithraic rank, 4.16.3 fish (ikhthus), eat other fish, 1.5.3; eaten by humans, 1.13.5, 4.21.1; not eaten by Syrians, 2.61.7, 4.15.5; or by Egyptian priests, 4.7.2; or by initiates of Eleusis,

4.16.6; Jewish restrictions, 4.14.1; killed by humans, 3.18.2; over-population, 1.16.2; aware of environment, 3.9.4 fly (muia), not obviously useful, 3.20.4 fox (alôpêx), goes mad, 3.24.4 goat (aix), sacrificed, 2.10.1, 2.59.2; needs humans, 3.12.2; connection with gods and heroes, 3.16.4-5, 3.17.1; herds, 4.3.1; he-goat (tragos), 3.1.3 goose (khên), oath of Socrates, 3.16.6 goshawk (phassophonos), 3.8.8 grasshopper (tettix), not good flyer, 3.23.3 halcyon (alkuôn), a metamorphosed human, 3.16.7 hare (lagôs), prolific, 1.16.1; hunted, 3.5.6; by eagle, 3.8.3 hippopotamus (hippos potamios), kills father, 3.23.4 hog, see ‘pig’ horse (hippos), useful if numbers controlled, 1.11.5; not eaten by Greeks, 1.14.3; races, 1.33.6; metaphor, 1.43.2; illnesses, 3.7.3, 3.24.4; hoof as defence, 3.9.2; needs human society, 3.12.2; work, 3.18.6; war-horses, 3.20.1; punishment, 3.22.3; how to charm, 3.22.4; measure of wealth, 4.3.1; and Hekate, 4.16.5 hyena (huaina), female Mithraic rank?, 4.16.3; corocotta, 3.4.5 ibis (ibis), Egyptian interpretation, 4.9.9 jackal (thôs), eats raw meat, 1.13.3 jay (kitta), imitates human speech, 3.4.4 krex, 3.5.5 and note lamprey (muraina), responds to Crassus, 3.5.1 leopard (pardalis), uses teeth, 3.9.2; exercises human courage, 3.20.1 lion (leôn), no use to humans, 1.11.5; attacks humans, 1.14.1; powerful

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Indexes carnivore, 1.15.1; roar, 3.5.7; fights with teeth and claws, 3.9.2; exercises human courage, 3.20.1; anger, 3.22.5; braver than deer, 3.23.6; in Egyptian cult, 4.9.2-4; Mithraic rank, 4.16.3; title of sun, 4.16.5 lioness (leaina), title of Hekate, 3.17.2, 4.16.5 lizard (sauros), numbers self-limiting, 4.14.3; title of sun, 4.16.5 locust (akris), eaten in food crisis, 1.25.3 lynx (lunx), urine of, 3.23.5 mole (aspalax), divinatory, 2.48.1 monkey (pithêkos), not sacrificed, 2.25.2; ugly, 3.23.1 mosquito (empis), not useful, 3.20.4 mouse (mus), numbers self-limiting, 4.14.3 mule (hêmionos), needs human society, 3.12.2; sterile, 3.22.7 nightingale (aêdôn), teaches young to sing, 3.6.5; metamorphosed human, 3.16.7 owl (glaux), and Athene, 3.5.5 ox (bous), see ‘cattle’ parrot (psittakos), imitates human speech, 3.4.4 partridge (perdix), communicates with humans, 3.4.7; not strong flyer, 3.8.8, 3.23.3; male destroys eggs, 3.23.4 perch (saperdês), comes when called, 3.5.1 pig (hus; there is no clear distinction between hus and sus), useful only for eating, 1.14.3-4; prolific, 1.16.1; meat of, 1.23.1; illness, 3.7.4; made for us to eat, 3.20.1, 3.20.3; not eaten by Jews, 4.11.1, 4.14.1; (sus), killed by Klymene, 2.9.2; not eaten by Jews, 2.61.7; approves of pleasure, 3.1.3; hunted, 3.8.4; Latin name, 4.16.5; hog (sialos) unclean, 2.25.4 purple-fish (porphura), treat for humans, 3.20.2

ram, see ‘sheep’ raven (korax), divinatory, 2.48.1; understood by Arabs, 3.4.1; and by diviners, 3.4.3; imitates human speech, 3.4.4; more comprehensible than Syrian, 3.5.3; and Apollo, 3.5.5; Mithraic rank, 4.16.3 ‘redbreast’ (erithakos), imitates human speech, 3.4.4 and note sawfish (pristis), not obviously useful, 3.20.4 sea-anemone (akalêphê), treat for humans, 3.20.2 scarab, see ‘dung-beetle’ scorpion (skorpios), killed by humans, 1.20.2; not sacrificed, 2.25.2; uses sting, 3.9.2; not obviously useful, 3.20.4; Latin name, 4.16.5 sheep (probaton, ois), killed by humans, 1.6.3; manageable number, 1.11.4-5; human use of wool, 1.21.1-2, 3.26.12, and of milk, 3.18.5; sacrificed, 1.57.4, 2.9.3, 2.25.4; bleating, 3.5.7; need human society, 3.12.2; called dirty, 3.23.5; less clever than dogs, 3.23.6; measure of wealth, 4.3.1; ram (krios), and Zeus, 3.16.4; Egyptian interpretation, 4.9.9 shellfish (ostrea), treat for humans, 3.20.2 snake (drakôn), licks human ears, 3.4.1; keen sight, 3.8.3; not useful, 3.20.6; and Helios, 4.16.5; (ophis) 1.14.1-2, 1.20.2, 1.24, 1.25.2, 2.25.2; in Egypt, 3.9.2, 4.13.3 sparrow (strouthos), nests in roofs, 3.9.3; suppliant, 3.16.2 stag, see ‘deer’ stork (pelargos), and Hera, 3.5.5; kind to parents, 3.11.1, 3.23.4 swallow (khelidôn), communicates, 3.3.6; nests in roofs, 3.9.3; metamorphosed human, 3.16.7; makes preparations, 3.22.5; excretes outside nest, 3.23.5 swan (kuknos) and Zeus, 3.16.5; and Socrates, 3.16.6; and Thracian hero, 3.17.1

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Indexes wolf (lukos), no use to humans, 1.11.5; attacks humans, 1.14.1; powerful carnivore, 1.15.1; Apollo kills, 1.22.1; in favour of meat-eating, 3.1.3; howl, 3.5.7; she-wolf (lukaina), nursed a human, 3.17.1; title of Artemis, 4.16.5 worm (skôlêx), numbers are self-limiting, 4.14.3

thrush, Latin name Merulus, 4.16.5 tortoise (khelônê), slow, 3.23.1 viper (ekhis), as medicine, 1.17.1-2 and note; (ekhidna) not useful, 3.20.4 vulture (gups), in favour of meat-eating, 3.1.3; Egyptian interpretation, 4.9.9 whale (phalainê), not obviously useful, 3.20.4; humans useful to, 3.20.6

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